Burnt Down to the Soul
by Elsa2
Summary: COMPLETE Harry catches Snape. Or Snape catches Harry. Dumbledore’s final secret is revealed when the storm breaks ... and I bet it's not the secret you think. Warning: major HBP spoilers. Rated for violence and some language.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: None of those associated with Hogwarts and its environs are my property (beyond paying for the books, of course). I am merely playing with JKR's toys and promise to return them unharmed. Well, maybe a little singed, but that can't be helped.

Warning: This story contains gigantic, humungous spoilers of HBP. If you haven't read it, what are you waiting for? Go and read something by a real author.

Thanks to Persephone Lupin for giving encouragement. And the Gods of Caffeine who made me sleepless last Friday night and insisted I begin this (usually I just curse them, but this time they had something useful to give). It was meant to be a short one-shot thing, but it's probably going to be posted in three chapters. (No, I haven't abandoned Horse, but I was a little, erm, unhappy at the ending of Book6 so decided to be proactive. Three cheers for good mental health, everybody!)

ooOOoo

**Burnt Down to the Soul – part I**

ooOOoo

When he'd started out in the early evening Harry had been surrounded by friends and members of the Order. Now, with only one star flickering intermittently through the thick building clouds that rumbled overhead and the last warmth of the day long since faded, he was alone. 

Or almost alone. 

His only company was a shadow slipping ahead of him between the rocks and boulders on this rugged excuse for a beach; a shadow that was quickly fading into the other shadows as the last light lingering after a sunset that bruised the sky drained out of the world. The shadow he was chasing.

It seemed to be a recurring theme in his life, this having and then not-having. Well, at least this way no-one he loved would be hurt.

_Again._

And, Harry knew, catching sight of that tall shadow as it ducked into a darker shadow in the base of the cliff, at least he wouldn't have to worry about Hermione's voice high with horror as she said _Crucio? You used the cruciatis? I don't care that it was on Snape, Harry; you used the cruciatis on someone!_

No. At least he wouldn't have to worry about that. Because Hermione would never know.

He shivered as dry thunder rolled overhead. Given the low ceiling of those clouds over the cliffs and matt grey sea and the way his nose hurt from the low pressure, it couldn't be long until the rain came. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry caught a flicker of light. He counted twelve Mississippis before the thunder. It had been fifteen when he'd pursued the dark figure down the cliff. So. The storm was getting closer.

Slipping on one of the rocks slick from low tide, Harry crouched, catching his balance and his breath. He waited for a precious few seconds until he was sure the Snape really had gone into the cave, then covered the ground between there and the cave in a fast, crouching run, hoping that the wind buffeting against the shore provided enough noise to cover the crunch-crunch of his feet in the pebbles. Halfway there, something scuttled out and around the rock he was passing and Harry had to force himself not to leap up and expose himself to any watching Death Eater.

A crab. 

Its mottled grey and apricot shell was as broad as his hand. Pincers held out and up aggressively at Harry, the crab ran sideways and under another rock.

Despite the raised claws, it looked as frightened as Harry refused to let himself be. 

It wasn't a threat, though. He went on.

The wind curled and snarled, ruffling his already messy hair and beginning to bite hard into his shoulder through the hole Nagini had left in his cloak as he slunk along the edge of the cliff; he had chosen to approach the cave in a curve to keep him out of sight of Snape, who had merged into the shadows. He ignored the ache with the ease of practice.

Cautiously, knowing Snape wouldn't hesitate to cast the Killing Curse, Harry peered into the darkness. A flicker of lightning cast just enough light to show that it wasn't a cave – it was more like a tunnel. The cave Dumbledore had taken Harry to burrowed deep into the land, giving Harry no reason to expect he should be lucky and find Snape at the end of a short tunnel (and God, but it still hurt; _hurt_ like swallowing acid to know that the cave they'd found Regulus' replacement locket was just along the coast… it probably had their footsteps inside even after Albus had been buried these long eight months…). It was a shame his Invisibility Cloak had just been lost in the fire that erupted in the huge cave Voldemort was meeting with his Death Eaters, but Harry couldn't waste time on regrets. Not when he had so much hate to drive focus him on the near future. The near future: with a little luck he'd be able to tighten his hands around Snape's throat as the traitor died.

Harry had to pause to breathe. The hate was a fire, hotter than the one that had consumed Nagini, but cold as well, and sometimes when it got too much it hit his stomach like he'd swallowed his own vomit.

If he let it swell over his common sense he'd be dead. Snape would see to that. Harry breathed deep until the cold air ached in his lungs, making himself stop and think rather than react. Ironically, reacting rather than thinking was something Snape had always sneered at him for. Harry hoped he remembered to thank him for teaching him that before he killed the greasy traitor. 

He squatted down in the lee of a boulder and carefully tucked the hem of his robe up before it could get wet in water left by the tide as he considered the options. Maybe the cave opened out somewhere else and Snape had escaped. Harry sincerely hoped not, but he also refused to let himself rush in just in case Snape was taking the opportunity to get to ground where he could Apparate. It was more likely, though, that Snape was waiting for Harry in the cave, having found a nice dark niche in which to secret himself away like a spider waiting to pounce.

Well, Harry was expecting an ambush anyway. And Harry had learned a lot about fighting this year – much of it dirty. He'd learned from Aurors rather than McGregor, that over-confident, sorry excuse for a DADA professor who'd triggered Riddle's curse after only three and a half months by trying to summon Death to deal with the Death Eaters. _He_'d ended up a greasy pile of ash.

The DADA classroom was still cordoned off (Flitwick had tried to explain the dimensional impossibility of the magic but given up midway, shaking his head). And from time to time the house elves still found bits of McGregor in the ceiling of the room on the floor below. Usually when someone complained about the stink starting up again.

Harry took a deep breath, hoping this cold, iron-black sea wasn't going to be the last glimpse he had of the living world, and adjusted his grip on his wand, closing his eyes for a brief second just to check that his personal wards he'd put back up after that fiasco in Voldemort's cave were still strong.

They hummed with crystalline perfection.

He had to wade through thigh-high water to get into the mouth of the cave. Inside was even colder than outside, but at least he didn't have the wind biting through the tear in his cloak. You didn't need magic to die; the cold wind combined with his wet robes could kill with hypothermia.

Harry dared a quick drying spell. Nice of Snape to help him learn non-verbal magic – he'd have to thank him for that, too. Harry grinned like a wolf.

It didn't take long for his eyes to adjust, and his night-vision was enhanced by the spell Neville had found while doing research for the Order – Hermione had been the one to overcome its obvious negative (it tended to dissolve the cornea) by casting it on Harry's glasses.

Looking through them showed the cave coloured in soft pastel blues that ranged into indigo over corners and edges; the sharper the edges were, the more purple the appeared.

Biological material that had come into contact with magic (including the linen favoured by wizards, especially the more traditional ones) would flare yellow.

There was no sudden sunflower Dark Wizard, although the streaks of pulsing orange down the walls and curving where the water had left its touches made Harry's heartbeat quicken. But it was only algae and seaweed and the oblong orange buttons of molluscs. It was a little surprising they should be so bright, but then it could be explained by proximity to the cave where -

Harry refused to think of that. It only made the hate cloud his mind.

Outside, the wind howled. But for some reason it didn't penetrate the cave. Inside was the silence of a tomb. He stepped forward and froze as something popped loudly under his foot.

When he didn't die or fall to the ground writhing in agony, he braved another breath and looked down.

Seaweed. Neptune's Necklace. Useful for potions where gillyweed was contra-indicated. 

_Oh, damn._

The floor was covered in it; little strands of water- and air-filled capsules, ready to pop and crackle when he stood on them.

Harry took another, deeper breath and began the slow job of picking his way over the floor without falling or being hexed. At least the paleness of the seaweed gave him some security that it hadn't been spelled to attack him or something, and he found that if he walked slowly, carefully putting his feet flat, he didn't pop any more of the seaweed's leathery bubbles.

He made it across to a small beach of coarse sand. It was the best beach he'd seen here – ironic that it should be in a cave inaccessible except at low tide. Above the beach (pale sand glowing like ground amethyst) was the dark opening he'd caught a glimpse of by lightning. As if on cue, lightning lit up the sky behind him. 

Harry cursed himself for his stupidity at setting himself up like that as he threw himself down on the beach. 

Moody would have his hide for something so stupid – make sure you don't show your opponent where you are _unless you want him to know._

And Harry didn't want Snape to know. Not yet. Maybe he'd use himself as bait later, but it shouldn't come to that. In a face-to-face duel with Snape, Harry didn't like the odds. This wasn't about fighting Gryffindor-fair. It was about achieving his goal.

Chase Snape.

Catch Snape.

Kill Snape.

Tell the Order it was "a matter of him or me" to justify the killing before information could be extracted. Harry suspected Snape could lie through Veritaserum – he'd convinced Albus he was loyal, hadn't he? – so why bring the poisonous snake in close enough to loose his venom? Harry expected the Order to kill Snape, either a direct execution or through interrogation, but he had enough respect for the sheer vindictiveness of the man to expect that Snape could lace his information with just enough lies to lead them all to ruin.

Better to kill him now.

Harry didn't pretend that he wouldn't feel satisfaction. He'd tell Hermione, Ron and Ginny he didn't, of course, but he refused to lie to himself.

He lay there on the cold sand, waiting, then realised that no curse had whistled over his head. Or blasted his skull apart.

He'd been lucky.

Luck couldn't be trusted. Harry punched himself on the thigh as a reminder that the next time he mucked it up things could be painful. Or not painful – simply very short, ending in a flash of green light.

_Voldemort had ordered his Death Eaters to leave Harry alone. Snape would have been obedient to that. But since Voldemort had come to see Harry in the rusting cage, smiled his cold smile, reached through the bars and – and Harry was a little hazy about the next part. It had involved pain. And when he'd come back to consciousness, Voldemort had still been there, smiling as something tickled Harry's cheek. Harry had lifted a hand to itch it and his fingers had come back red. When he'd reached up to the dull pain at his scar, he'd winced._

As he held up a fistful of something that glittered at tore at the eyes with its suggestion of too many dimensions, Voldemort said, "I didn't make that one quite right…. But then I was_ interrupted, wasn't I?" He smiled, or his thin lips curved in the attempt. "But never mind – with your death I will be able to reforge it into a much better Horcrux. It will be an adequate replacement for the locket. As for the diary – tush, Harry; I compensated for that one three months ago with the help of your young Mudblood friend… Creevy, was it? I'll try to find another of your little playmates for the ring I lost. I think that would be fair, seeing as how it was a friend of yours who destroyed the ring."_

And chuckled as he walked off with Harry's scar still shimmering in his hand.

Harry used the sleeve of his robes to wipe his face clean. Surprisingly, it didn't hurt. And it left him feeling free – light-headed but clear of focus. Voldemort had, almost literally, taken a weight off his mind. Part of him ached from the news of Colin's death. They'd thought his parents had taken him and his brother to America to be safe…

Poor Colin.

But Harry was becoming used to people dying. It happened on average once every four days, after all. He'd sat down and calculated it one rainy afternoon. But knowing that Colin had been used to make another Horcrux bit deep, and not just because it meant another Horcrux Harry had to find and destroy. 

But it was nothing short of a miracle that Voldemort hadn't found the cup and the brooch on Harry… He'd thought it was Voldemort's idea to lure him out into the open with the bait of a way to destroy the metal-based Horcruxes. Apparently not. Thinner and even less sane-seeming than the last time Harry had encountered him, he was still a powerful wizard; but the power that rolled off him like smoke wasn't enough to break through Harry's anger and into the secrets in Harry's mind – like the secret of where he was hiding Helga Hufflepuff's cup and Gryffindor's brooch. Voldemort could have plucked it out of his pocket, but for some reason the dark wizard didn't even bother. Harry wasn't sure if Voldemort was playing some sort of game or if he was planning on doing something later. Neither option appealed: Voldemort looked even more devoid of the barest of humanities each time he divvied up the remnant of his soul.

It wouldn't make so much as a snack for a Dementor now.

But whatever Voldemort was planning, he'd left Harry in peace for a time – maybe it would be time enough for Harry to hatch a plan or be rescued or –

That brief relief was squashed when Nagini coiled herself around his cage.

Since Voldemort had taken his scar, Harry expected he was now classified as fair game.  
  
Harry shook his head at the memory – the susurration of scales sounded a little like his footsteps as he walked through the sand and into the tunnel, forcing himself to concentrate on the here and now.

Especially because the spell on his glasses was strong enough to have made out the footprint in the sand.

Harry smiled grimly to himself.

It was slow-going, picking his way through the darkness. The tunnel wound like a corkscrew and sometimes Harry had the feeling he was crawling along the ceiling like a fly. He'd squeeze through another crevice, once finding a scrap of cloth. It glowed yellow. However, Harry fully expected the original colour was black.

He decided against tucking it into his pocket. Who knew what purpose its owner had spelled it with?

It seemed like an eternity before Harry came to the exit. The draughts on his cold, damp face let him know where he was before he heard the howling wind.

Very, very carefully, knowing that this would be a good place for that ambush, Harry poked his head out and looked around.

Nothing.

Some rocks and sea-grass almost flattened by the wind. The wind was so strong now that when Harry opened his mouth it tried to blow down his throat.

Nothing.

Damn. Snape had probably scarpered. The anti-Apparation wards Voldemort had set up around the area had their limits nearby – Harry could sense them.

Furious, Harry climbed up and out of the hole, brushing himself off as he looked around. Nothing. Even his glasses, spelled for the darkness, couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. Just pale orange grass and blue rocks.

He turned just in time to see a blazing line of yellow rise up from behind one of the rocks.

Harry was too slow to block the curse. It ripped through his personal wards like they were paper and blasted apart behind his eyes in a galaxy of red stars.

ooOOoo

When he woke he was surprised to find himself glued to a large boulder. On reflection, he was especially surprised to find that he was alive and able to wake again.

He blinked muzzily in the thin light provided by a small globe of magic secured against the wind in the lee of the tallest rock. The scene didn't look promising: the area was perhaps twenty feet at the widest point; it was roughly triangular, framed by rocks. Harry suspected the ground had subsided at some point, perhaps collapsing on a cave as the sea (which he could hear pounding on the rocks as the tide returned with a wind-whipped vengeance). As he was finding it difficult to make out details and the bluish quality the rocks once had was now faded to grey, Harry guessed the spell had worn off his glasses. Either that or it had been shattered along with his wards and – it felt – the back of his skull. Harry stifled a groan as he tried to see what else was here. There was a pile of rocks in the -

A flash of lightening followed by thunder that rocked Harry to his teeth showed the pile of rocks to be a little more sinister – a small dolmen. At one time – thousands of years ago, perhaps – it would have stood taller than Harry's head and been covered in earth. It would have contained the body of a powerful wizard or clan-chief. But now the earth had been washed away by several ages of rain and wind and the bones must have scattered into the tides. All that was left were the three massive stones. While the capstone was had remained remarkably level on the two uprights, those supporting stones had sunk beneath the combined weight down into the earth so that the capstone was a little shorter than waist-height… or the waist-height of the black-robed figure that stood over it, spreading things out on it like it was a table. Or as if the dolmen would serve for the more modern Dark Magic purpose of sacrificial altar.

Perhaps he should have pretended to stay unconscious, but by the time his sluggish brain tabled that as an option, Snape had already seen him open his eyes. Harry shuddered as those cold blank eyes rested on him and then moved on. Now that he'd seen Harry was still stuck to that rock, arms and legs akimbo, Snape seemed to lose interest in favour of what was on the small dolmen in front of him. 

Harry squinted. His glasses were speckled from the first flecks of rain, although the wind seemed to miss this small pocket in the hill, surrounded as it was by tall stones of the same lichen-covered grey of the dolmen. The wind barely stirred Snape's lank hair. The hood of Snape's Death Eater robes was back and the mask wasn't in immediate evidence – oh, that's right: Harry had broken it in the commotion when Nagini went berserk.

Funny that – the time spent as a Horcrux must have sent the snake mad. That was the only explanation Harry could think of for her susceptibility to his parseltongue commands – certainly she shouldn't have confused him for her master and Voldemort for Harry. But so it had been. 

_Harry gave her the first command as she threatened to crush him in his cage… "Sstop!" he hissed. It was an accident made in panic and he suspected a trap when she obeyed. Voldemort making him think he might get out of this alive; setting Harry up to destroy him by breaking all hope. Out of some morbid need to find out how far Voldemort thought Harry would believe he had a chance, Harry hissed to the gigantic snake. She'd hissed back, convinced that he was The Enemy. With a whimsy he tended towards in the face of death, Harry told her that The Enemy had put a spell on her, making her think that her master was The Enemy and The Enemy was out there in Master's chair, fooling the Death Eaters into taking his orders._

Couldn't Nagini sense the pieces of her master's soul on the one she was talking to? Harry argued, gripping the cup of Helga Hufflepuff and Gryffindor's bronze brooch. 

Nagini could.

First, she returned him his wand. It had been left within sight, of course – evil was pretty damn predictable sometimes. Then, her black tourmaline eyes still glittering strangely, she broke the lock on Harry's cage with a blow of her tail, glided away at full, silent speed, and dived into the gathering.

Harry managed to escape in the uproar. Sheer luck gave him the chance of thumping Snape on the way out and breaking his mask. Before Harry'd lifted his wand, someone had been thrown into them by Nagini's lashing tail and Snape disappeared into the melee. Shame Snape wasn't one of the ones killed by Nagini, but Harry was gripped with a savage pleasure when he saw Snape slip through the magically screened door.

Voldemort was too busy cremating his own snake and Horcrux to see his prisoner escaping. 

Harry took advantage of his distraction to leg it out the door after Snape. Once outside, he'd sent up the flare he'd been prevented from lighting when the Death Eaters had caught him sneaking around the cave.  
  
And now Snape had caught him sneaking around another cave.

Snape. Now ignoring Harry as if Harry had less importance than the items in front of him. Which, Harry realised, going cold, might just be true. There was the bisected circle of the Celtic-style cloak brooch, glowing sullen with its own light. Helga's cup sat primly next to it. Snape dipped into a pocket and withdrew something pale and slender. It looked a little like a short knitting needle made out of ivory, but the button on the end was ornate and finished in copper or gold.

"So what's that?" Harry asked, surprised by how conversational his voice sounded. Not a bit like his true intentions, which involved tearing and rending and not a little use of Unforgivables. 

He was equally surprised that Snape answered. "It's a hairpin. Rowena Ravenclaw's, to be precise." Snape's voice wasn't quite as smooth as Harry remembered – there was a rough burr to the edge of it.

"Ivory?"

"Bone. From her own shin, according to the story."

Ugh. But little truly shocked Harry these days. "And it's a Horcrux?"

"What do you think?"

Harry considered this for a minute then shrugged. "You look like shit. Are you a heroin addict now or something?"

Snape ignored him. But it was true: even on a good day, Snape had never looked healthy. Now, with his greasy hair thinning so much that only a few strands straggled over his face, which was almost skeletal. That nose looked even more like something left over after the invention of the vulture as it jutted out from sickly skin and sunken cheeks. Snape's eyes looked even more dead than Harry remembered. They were sunken into dark hollows, and reminded him uncomfortably of the reason Harry had stopped looking in mirrors: something about the expression in them said that they belonged to a person who had spent too long living in despair. It was a look he'd seen strongest on two separate people who'd committed suicide not long after Harry had noted that look.

The day he'd seen himself with that look, Harry had stopped looking into mirrors.

Snape had that look in spades.

Well, he'd chosen Voldemort; Harry expected Snape got what he deserved in that camp. If not, Harry would be glad to offer assistance to rectify this.

"It suits you," Harry continued in a friendly way. "Sort of, I don't know, expressing the inner you. So… starting an antique collection, are you?"

For the first time, Snape met his eye. Harry flinched, surprising himself that Snape could still make him feel horror.

"The last one is for you," Snape rasped, then coughed, skinny shoulders juddering under the robes that looked too big for his scrawny frame. He bent over and gripped the edge of the stone slab and spat a glob of phlegm into the shadows. Harry curled his lip in disgust, ignoring the last comment. He was used to death threats. 

"Don't have much of a health plan, these Death Eaters, do they."

A mirthless grin stretched parchment skin over cheekbones so sharp they cut the next lightning into shadows. "No. Your last lesson from me, Potter – don't cast Unforgivables unless you mean them." The thunder rolled so loud the stone Harry was stuck to shuddered.

"Finally kill your Granny, did you?" Harry sneered, cheeks burning. What, did Snape suddenly want Harry to think he'd killed Albus against his own will? Harry was there. He knew the truth. And he wasn't stupid.

But Snape had turned away, staring down at the three objects arranged in a line on the stone slab. He sighed, raising one arm.

Lightning tore the world apart.

ooOOoo

A/N: I have no idea of the seashore flora around the British Isles and it's been longer than I care to think between now and 7th Form Bio. Excuse any biological discrepancies.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: None of those associated with Hogwarts and its environs are my property (beyond paying for the books, of course). I am merely playing with JKR's toys and promise to return them unharmed. Well, maybe a little singed, but that can't be helped.

Warning: This story contains gigantic, humungous spoilers of HBP. If you haven't read it, what are you waiting for? Go and read something by a real author.

This chapter gets a little dark, and not just because it's night. If you don't like it I don't recommend the next chapter.

ooOOoo

Spots danced in Harry's eyes long after the stink of ozone and scorched flesh had been taken by the wind. The world still shook with the aftermath of thunder – oh, no: it was Harry who shook, gradually realising he'd been trying to dig through the stone with his shoulder-blades. The fear that pulsed through him was purest animal panic – he'd only felt it this intensely when he'd been crucio'd by Voldemort after the Goblet of Fire tournament. His body screamed at him to run and he probably would have bolted over the cliff if he hadn't been pinned to the rock.

After the smell came realisation of a noise, a faint moan of something in pain.

Harry hoped it wasn't him.

But then grey returned out of the popping black-and-white afterimages the lightning had burned into the backs of his eyes and he realised that the fuzzy grey thing he was staring at was the dolmen.

A piece of rock had broken off it and had fallen, cutting into the earth with a sharp knife edge. Harry swallowed, gladthat both it and the lightning hadn't hit him.

Another muffled moan drew his attention to the figure clawing its way back to its feet. Snape rested his weight on the capstone for a minute.

"Can't take a hint, can you?" Harry grinned. Snape was scorched down one side; the sleeve of his left arm in tatters. What the flesh was like underneath was probably pure justice.

Snape ignored him and raised his left arm again. It was only then that Harry recognised that not only was the other wizard pointing his wand at the silver cup, he'd been pointing his wand at the bronze brooch before the lightning hit.

The brooch was gone.

Harry might have thought it blown away by the blast, hidden in some crevice somewhere, but for the metallic streak on the stone where it had been. He went cold as he reaslised...

"Snape…"

Then the lightning hit again. Harry was ready for it this time and closed his eyes just in time, prewarned by Snape's shoulders hunching against the blow.

No-one could protect theirself against a force like that.

And then there was the thunder…

When he opened his eyes again the air tasted of tin and his hair was standing on end. Now that he knew what was going to happen it was only half as frightening – which meant he didn't want to throw up with the aftershock quite so badly. Unfortunately, the rank stink of burning hair and flesh didn't help ease his stomach.

This time the spots faded faster, and he saw that the silver cup was another smear on the capstone.

Snape was a ragged pile of smoking black robes under the dolmen.

Harry bit his lip. It was like not looking at a road accident as you went past in the bus after primary school. It was something you just had to do, even though you knew you'd give yourself nightmares. And it was some time before Snape could move again. Several flashes of lightning made Harry flinch, but none reached into the little hollow. There was an odd tightness inside his chest as he watched Snape sit up and move his head from side-to-side as if something terrible pained him. It felt a little like sympathy.

Harry preferred the hate.

Hate hurt less than watching this man groping over the ground with one hand. The other hand was curled to his chest.

"To your right," Harry said.

Snape stilled for half a second, then reached to the right.

"A little more."

Fingers closed around the wand. And when Snape tilted back his head Harry saw that his suspicions were correct: the lightning had scored across Snape's face. Half his hair was burned down to a stubble – that explained the terrible smell. A great line of charcoal running from his left temple down and across to the right corner of his jaw had slit in places, showing thinner lines gleaming raw and red in the light of the globe. The lightning had ripped right across the eyes, which wept jelly and blood. Snape was blind.

The certainty of Harry's world trembled. It was as if…

"He'll just make more, you know," Harry said. His head felt light. He was babbling, he knew, but he felt that if he could just keep talking he would somehow tumble into the truth of Dumbledore's death and the continuing life of the Half-Blood Prince. He'd been weighing up Ron's life – saved when Harry had remembered words in Snape's book about using a bezoar for poisoning – against Dumbledore's death for too many months now. He needed to align the two in his own head just to get the world on an even keel again. When Dumbledore had fallen away off the top of the tower Harry had lost protection, a mentor, a link to his parents and a friend… Two friends. Because he'd lost his illusions about the Half-Blood Prince.

Or maybe he'd only been given new ones…

Snape tilted his head to the side, as if trying to make sense of Harry's words. Or maybe just to get his balance back. It wasn't easy knowing the absolute difference between up and down when you were in pitch dark.

Or right and wrong. As Harry knew from experience.

"More Horcruxes," Harry elaborated. "He can divide his soul up again and again."

Snape shook his head silently. The faintest smile touched the corners of that grim mouth. A new line of red opened up in the burn, and Snape winced.

So did Harry. "Did you stop him from…?"

Again, a head-shake, and Snape made a soft, breathy sound of pain.

Harry went rigid at the sound. He knew he'd hear it in nightmares to come. "Is he too thinly-spread?" Harry guessed, thinking aloud as he remembered how Voldemort looked somehow… two-dimensional. Like someone in a wizard photo: he could move and get information across, but you kept feeling that if you tilted the picture fast enough he'd thin out of sight.

Only a pity life wasn't like that.

(In the confusion of Nagini's attack on her master, he'd seen the silvery stuff Voldemort had taken from his scar trickle through his fingers… and Voldemort had glowed with fury that only made the confusion worse… and it meant, Harry hoped one less Horcrux to deal with.)

Snape, who was dragging himself up paused, breathing with a rasp that made Harry swallow in empathy, nodded. He propped himself on one elbow, Harry noticed; he couldn't take his eyes off the other arm which showed the occasional glimmer of white bone through blackened flesh.

Then he realised the harsh sounds weren't just Snape breathing: there were words in there.

"Dark… Mark… Vo… morr… _hah_… Follow nine days… initiationn… Unnersta'?"

The voice was slurred. But Harry understood. "Yes."

Voldemort would be initiating new Death Eaters in nine days. He'd be spreading himself so thin at that time that he should be a good target for the Order. Harry understood that perhaps this was information that could be used to _trap_ the remaining members of the Order – Voldemort might be using Snape like this to give information that seemed good and would turn out to be poison.

Harry couldn't say for sure. He really couldn't. He didn't know how far Snape would go to help Voldemort – this might be some incredibly elaborate set-up to draw out the rest of the Order.

Or it might be their one chance.

Either way, there was little he could do to help or hinder Snape at this moment. He knew the other wizard must be weakening by the way the bonds holding him flattened against the rock had loosened slightly. Just enough to wriggle, but not enough for him to reach his wand or slip out of the invisible magical ropes.

Snape was standing now. If his face hadn't been ruined, Harry was sure he would have been scowling down at the bone hairpin.

"It's just in front of you," Harry said softly as the tall wizard swayed slightly. Snape moved his hand. "Move your wand a little to the right – yes – stop. That's it." He was oddly touched by the silent obedience. "But first you have to…"

Then the hairs up the back of his neck began to prickle. _No!_ he thought. _Not yet – I need to - !_

There was no time to warn Snape, but it didn't matter because Snape had sensed it too and his left hand, charred to the bone, was raised in the air like he wanted to ask a question and

and the lightning

came down

and this time Harry heard in the back of his mind a faint howl of rage as it grounded itself in the Horcrux

and the world went so white it was black

and turned over

and the bonds holding Harry dissolved, dumping him on the sandy soil.

ooOOoo

A/N: Thanks to reviewers and thanks for your kind comments:  
Oya, Unlikely2, Sliverthreads, Persephone Lupin (oops – I always used 'Mississippi one, Mississippi two, Mississippi three' etc to count seconds when I was a kid. It's just a handy long word that rolls off the tongue), Nikole Riddle, Miranda (yeah, ambiguity seems to be central to his character), duj, LM, Zesty! (don't worry – it should be clear by the end… if not, let me know and I'll re-write), juliedecarson, SirJimmy7, Elizabeth Marshall Pennyworth, and Liz the Factotum

Cheers, people! I was going to hold off doing some writing for a bit, but you were so encouraging I thought I'd better post something. Cheesy but true.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: None of those associated with Hogwarts and its environs are my property (beyond paying for the books, of course). I am merely playing with JKR's toys and promise to return them unharmed. Well, maybe a little singed, but that can't be helped.

Warning: This story contains gigantic, humungous spoilers of HBP. If you haven't read it, what are you waiting for? Go and read something by a real author.

Oh, and this particular plot device isn't that original, either. I haven't seen it in fanfiction, though… see the final A/Ns for details.

This chapter gets extremely dark, and not just because it's night. 

ooOOoo

This time the darkness didn't clear. Harry realised it wasn't because he was blind (as he'd feared), but because the light globe Snape had set had gone out.

Harry raised himself so that he was kneeling, fished his wand out of his robes (and that was something else in Snape's favour – he'd left Harry his wand) and re-lit the globe.

And immediately wished he'd left it dark.

Sprawled over the dolmen in front of him was Snape.

Up close, Harry could see the cruelty dealt out by the elements. They'd been told a thousand times by Flitwick and whatever DADA teacher they had at the time: _don't mess with raw Nature._

Now he could see why.

He reached out and laid a hand on Snape's shoulder to see if the man was still alive, but pulled it back when something brittle crunched under the smouldering robe. Harry nearly threw up on the spot when he realised it was Snape's shoulder. The man was twitching a little, and Harry thought he might slide off the stone and hurt himself.

More. 

Harry decided up was better than down, and lifted Snape's legs to let the man lie on the dolmen. It didn't seem to make anything better (and Harry strongly suspected one leg was broken), but Harry needed to do something. He had absolutely no idea what he could do when Snape began to fit, though. One arm curled up towards the chest; the right arm, the one that could still move.

"Snape. _Snape._ Damn you… what do I do now? You must have a potion or something for… channelling a zillion volts…" Probably it had already been used up. How could anyone do a spell like that and expect to live? 

Backtracking in his thoughts, Harry answered that for himself.

Harry heard a faint moan and took that as encouragement.

"Snape?" he whispered after several deep breaths. "You have to tell me how to help you… And you have to tell me the truth…"

Nothing.

"I deserve the truth, Snape. So, perhaps, do you."

It was probably the height of stupidity, and he'd never heard of it being performed without eye contact (an impossibility when the eyes were burned out), but Harry lifted his wand and ignored his conscience, which told him he was being a vulture. Human considerations be damned – there was a war on and his friends were dying and this bastard was going to die on him without ever letting him know the real story: was this some trap by Voldemort or – less likely as Voldemort wasn't too nice when it came to sacrificing his followers when he felt he needed to – or was this self-sacrifice the truth? Because if so… if so… Because…

He needed to know.

_"Legilimens."_

There were no eyes left. It shouldn't have worked. But Harry slipped through the remains of Snape's mental shields like they were shattered eggshell and found a mind bewildered and lost in the agony and confusion left by the lightning.

Some instinct Harry had never touched before told him which nerve cluster to reach out to, and the spinning storm inside Snape's mind stopped revolving quite so violently. Hopefully it had stopped Snape's fit.

Harry moved deeper, looking for… he didn't know what he was looking for, he admitted to himself. But the search was important. And then he was swimming in Snape's mind.

Some thoughts moved sluggishly and without logical coherence. Others skittered in a swirl of random silvery memories like a shoal of fish frightened by the lunge of a shark. There was no coherence: no sanity. It seemed to have nothing in common with the man he'd known at Hogwarts; even though Snape had been borderline psychopathic on a good day and firmly psychopathic on the more usual bad ones, he'd never appeared scattered beyond insanity.

Harry paused, appalled. Surely this was a mistake? This was someone else. Some other Death Eater disguised as Snape.

It was like swimming through glycerine, but he kept going, gritting his teeth against what he found. 

There was pain, a great deal of pain from the thighbone that had snapped when the muscles spasmed as well as the burns that mostly went through the body, but that was swiftly fading into the chilly darkness that was tugging away faster and faster at the edges of the mind. Harry had the nasty thought that if he spent too long here, it would be him, too, that the darkness took. Thick tentacles of unattached memory dragged at him. Through it all was regret, a dissatisfaction that lay on the back of Harry's tongue like bile; nagging anxiety; and the feeling of bone-deep cold that made the body shudder… Harry couldn't pinpoint its source.

_"Snape. Severus…"_

The use of the given name stirred some response. Slow and sluggish, the mind turned to focus on him. Someone replied, _"Wha'…?"_

_"It's me – Harry."_

Pause. Mild consternation. Then the strands coalesced for the moment it took to say, _"Don' know Harry."_

Harry made the mistake of triggering a memory of a face. Unfortunately that face could have been that of James just as easily as it could have been of Harry.

That bitterness boiled up, thick as tar, hot with hate, splattering Harry. It burned as if it had been made physical and Harry gasped as he struggled against it. He yanked at another memory, then another, then another and another and another…

None stopped this hate. Broken though his body was, Snape clung to his hate like it was the only strength in the world and, bewildered and confused by the transformation he was undergoing, he tried to drag Harry down to drown in it with him.

Harry finally found a memory of a summer sky and dived into it. The hate dissipated with the next breath of wind that rippled the long grass. But Harry could still feel it around the edges, struggling to get to him. Somewhere, he knew his body was struggling to get its breath back. 

He paused here, considering and reassessing. It was easy to forget when you saw someone burned and broken that, even in the last heartbeats of their life, they wouldn't change. They'd still be full of hate and hateful. 

The blue sky filled most of the world now, luckily. And Harry leaped up to swim in it, noticing that even here (especially here, perhaps, given how strong Snape had grasped those old memories of bitterness and anger), the darkness was tearing holes. There had been yellow flowers when he'd arrived, and the smell of freesias. Now there were only a few bluebells under a tree… and then, in the blink of the mind's eye, the tree was gone.

Was it possible to die in another person's mind? He somersaulted in mid-air, reached out and touched a filament of willow bark that was floating in a zephyr, finding what remained of Snape's consciousness within it. _"How do I defeat Voldemort?"_

"You… Ah!" 

The bark flared up in Harry's hand and dissolved into smoke, which rose to form the Dark Mark.

There was a moment's blurring. Harry cursed himself and had to calm down the mind. Unfortunately by the time Snape was relatively calm again the edges of his mind were dissolving faster. The darkness was moving swifter now. The horizon of the blue sky was almost in arm-reach but there was nothing beyond it. The sky itself had darkened to bruised purple. The mind that Harry could still sense was aware of the approaching darkness, but in a dull, hopeful sort of way that made Harry's skin crawl with the urge to get out and get back to the light. He tried to grasp what was left in his hands and found that what was left was tarnished blue threading through the black tar of hate and bitterness. _"What happened with Dumbledore?"_

Blue sky and black tar swirled up and around Harry. And then there was something almost coherent in the dissolving mind. It crystallised around a memory. Harry dived onto it. Horrified, he watched a greasy-haired, hook-nosed figure running up to the top of Astronomy Tower. Albus was there – he heard him say the key words, the words that, to the Death Eaters surrounding Harry, would sound like he was begging for his life when in fact…

…when in fact it was quite the opposite.

And Harry knew, by the way death had stripped deception and cunning from the once-complex mind, leaving it bare of all but the truth, that the truth was that Albus had engineered this whole situation after he and Severus had paused the curse triggered by the ring-Horcrux that was eating more of Dumbledore than his hand. Albus had known he was going to die. He hadn't accepted "no" as an answer from Severus, even though they both knew the consequences.

Harry knew, but he didn't want to believe. It was easier to hate. Easier, like Snape had spent his life learning -

Jolted by the realisation of how easy it would be to turn into Snape, Harry punished himself by diving back for more memories.

Albus (or so the memories implied) had known Severus couldn't kill him with pure intention – and Harry, digging through memories burning and curling up at the edges as fast as he could to find something, _anything_, that proved Snape had always been the hateful traitor rather than… rather than…

Harry couldn't believe (didn't _want_ to believe, because why would Dumbledore be so kind to Harry all that year without have the guts to tell him he was going to die… and that Harry needed to brace himself for yet another loss?) Albus had ordered Snape to cast the Killing Curse, even if it _had_ inveigled Snape so far into Voldemort's Good Books that Snape had been able to nick the bone Horcrux and -

(what the fuck was LSD? Harry wondered, finding the reason for Nagini's weird behaviour… and finding Snape had doctored a rat with drops of LSD on its fur… but then the memory crisped and floated away and Harry didn't find out how Snape had managed to feed the rat to Nagini, let alone what it was)

- and arrange it (though these details, too, were gone, eaten by the darkness) so that Harry would be captured with two Horcruxes on him… but led Voldemort to suspect Harry had stashed them somewhere else before he was captured (God, what else had the man done?) and fed plans secretly to Kingsley Shacklebolt and…

… The memories fluttered past like confetti, too fast for Harry to catch before they were whirled away. Amongst the snow-storm he thought he saw Shacklebolt's face then Draco's screwed up in pique and Harry's glowering at him with that same sullen hatred he'd seen in his own mirror; Albus offering another of those ghastly lemon drops when he _knew_ what it did to his teeth; a younger McGonagall handing him back a Transfiguration essay marked _insufficient background research_; his mother cooking over the stove while his father sat at the table smoking cigarette after endless cigarette and the smoke hung under the grey ceiling and no-one broke the silence; Narcissa laughing at something amusing he'd said; Death Eaters standing in a semicircle while Voldemort spoke; Two boys, Sirius and Peter, with their faces twisted with loathing; Remus as a boy as a man with the same passive sadness at his own pathetic weakness in standing by and allowing injustice; Peter's face older but still with that loathing as Snape took pleasure in ordering him around like a servant; a list of the pros and cons of strangling that silly bitch Trelawney; a parcel that opened into a book without a title but which gave pleasure at the sight; selecting newt tails; Lucius showing some sort of voodoo poppet he'd bought as a souvenir in Haiti – the poppet looked a lot like Wormtail and Lucius grinned and said he'd been unable to resist buying it; a baby with almost-white hair wrapped fingers like tiny Wurtle-yams around the tip of one of his; Voldemort again, smiling; Dumbledore again, frowning; a young Draco and Narcissa together, heads together as Narcissa taught Draco to write his name; McGonagall again, tapping one finger on her cheek as she considered her next argument; Sprout; Flitwick over checkers; students Harry didn't know and neither did Snape now; more faces with no names; faces without features; blobs running into each other as the memories flew faster and with increasing randomness. 

Harry, feeling like he was being smothered in meaningless information, nearly took himself out of Snape's mind. But when, in a final effort, he called for the key to them all – the one Snape wanted him to take away – one small wafer of silver dropped into his hand.

And when Harry closed his hand over it and understood it, it wounded him.

Because, showed the memory that twanged with resentment, Dumbledore had known the price that was paid by anyone who didn't cast the Killing Curse with pure intention. It was a memory of Dumbledore stroking Fawkes' scarlet head, not looking at Severus as he said, _I'm sorry, Severus. But I'm sure there will be a way out for you._

No there isn't and you bloody well know it.

Have faith, my boy. As I have faith in you. You know your duty.

They'll call me the murderer and you the murdered… and who will know the truth? The room vibrated around Snape's fury. Dumbledore was unfazed. 

_You will know. And the truth can be the last gift any of us ever have in this life._

Yes, and I'm sure it will comfort me on my fast-approaching death-bed… should I be fortunate enough to get one.

A miscast Killing Curse ate away at the caster. Gradually and recognisably – but Snape had managed to disguise it as a reaction to one of the potions Voldemort had him working on and kept going.

Harry's world, which had been swaying since the first lightning bolt, turned upside-down.

_They'll call me the murderer and you the murdered… and who will know the truth?  
_  
The shock threw him out of Snape's mind and he landed, gasping from a bodiless pain, back behind his own eyes. They stared down at the ruined man on the dolmen.

He touched the one part of the face that wasn't scorched and found it was colder than his finger and slick with icy sweat. And Snape was still shaking, although the tremors had become random and shallow. A little like the heartbeat, as Harry discovered by pressing two fingers into the hollow under Snape's jaw. Thankfully it was one part that hadn't been burned, but the guttering heartbeat did nothing to reassure. Harry had only done a little mediwizardry, but in the last few months he had been field-tested in the diagnosis of shock. Snape was so far gone into it that his shivers were easing off.

Even though he knew it was futile, Harry tried casting a spell to stabilise Snape's life signs. The spell was sucked into the charred flesh like a drop of water on a bed-sized sponge.

Knowing there wasn't much time left and more chilled by his own callousness rather than the cold wind on his sweating face, Harry lifted his wand and plunged back into Snape's mind.

There was very little of it left.

This time it was calmer. The fragments of memory – good, bad or indifferent – floated around and sieved through Harry without real emotion. Harry drifted dangerously close to the edges, seduced by the darkness that made giving up and dissolving into oblivion so seductive. What shocked him most was how calmly Snape was taking dying. Possibly Snape didn't realise what was happening, or did not now that so much was gone from him. Harry searched for a spark of self-awareness but came up short.

He reached out and called for memories.

_"What you want me to see?"_ he asked.

And there it was. It wasn't a picture of Dumbledore forcing Snape into the promise to kill Dumbledore, thus proving Snape's innocence.

No. Thank Merlin. (Because Harry didn't want to be told yet again of how Dumbledore had effectively and knowingly sentenced Snape to death.) 

It was specific information on Voldemort. For a moment Harry didn't realise what he was seeing and he nearly lost seeing the moment of Snape's decision. Then, as the darkness came swirling in Harry ducked out, feeling the last of Snape – his mind, possibly his soul – finish like a sigh that ruffled Harry's hair as he tumbled back into his own body just in time. Maybe it was just that it had been such a horrible day, but he fancied he could feel the last flutters of the heart as it stilled.

It wasn't until he felt the coldness on his cheeks that Harry realised he'd been crying. There were Death Eaters around, and he'd behaved foolishly taking all this time trying to find out the truth from Snape. He should have taken the chance to get past the anti-Apparition barrier and… He wiped at his eyes – if crying was needed, it would have to wait. Snape had tried to give him something and Harry wouldn't be so ungrateful as to throw this last gift away.

Gingerly, knowing logically that there was no way he could hurt the man now, Harry pulled the left arm around. It crackled as the elbow bent and little bits like burnt bark on charcoal flaked away.

There, hovering over the inside of the forearm, was the Dark Mark. It stayed in its position where the flesh had burned away from it, tethered by almost invisible filaments. It was fading fast now, following its wearer into death, perhaps.

Harry's face twisted with rage. He wouldn't let it. From that last trip through Snape's mind Harry had understood that Snape – what had been left of Snape – had wanted him (anyone, really) to take it and use it against Voldemort.

He grabbed it and tugged. It writhed and came away with small twangs as the threads snapped. Part of him expected it to dissolve into the air like the soul-stuff Voldemort had taken from Harry's scar when the Dark Lord had lost his concentration on it in Nagini's attack. That was one last Horcrux he needed to worry about… But as soon as he lifted the Dark Mark away, though, it became oddly inert. The fading stopped at the point where it was becoming a little misty, but Harry could feel the magic in it waiting.

It could wait a little longer.

Harry had a small leather bag in his pocket where the Horcruxes had been. Snape must have left it when he took them from Harry. It was too big for the Mark, but when Harry pulled the drawstring tight he knew it wouldn't seep out and escape. And, as the bag was specially charmed to hold magical objects without any magical signature escaping, Harry was reasonably sure he wouldn't need to worry about Voldemort tracking him through Snape's Dark Mark. He put it in a pocket and shuddered at the feel of it: how Snape had stood carrying it around all those years on his arm was…

Snape.

Harry leaned over the body, unsure of what to do with it. He straightened one of the folds of the soft black cloth to cover a foot. Merlin, even the boots were scorched. Harry looked up. He considered pulling the hood of the robe up to cover the face; it would be kinder to cover it, but that would leave Snape looking like a Death Eater. Harry smoothed the hood over the shoulder instead. 

Probably he should just leave the body. But if Voldemort found it, he'd know by the lightning-burns that Snape had been the one to destroy the Horcruxes, wouldn't he? Harry had suspicions left from the ghostly, echoing memories Snape had given him that there were quite a few things left behind by Snape to make things a little less easy for Voldemort's forces… if Voldemort suspected Snape was less loyal than he'd thought, he might sniff them out and neutralise them.

Harry wished he could remember: amongst all the memories that had fluttered over him were images of a clear potion brewing over blue flames and some powder and three books and a double of Ravenclaw's hairpin…

All useless if Voldemort knew to be suspicious of anything Snape had been involved in.

The first fat drops of rain were spinning out of the sky. The wind howled overhead but, apart from the sound and the changing air pressure that made Harry's ears pop again and again. The sky itself was deepest purple and Harry shuddered at the memory of Snape's dying mind. A raindrop hit his glasses with a splot. He blinked reflexively and looked down again.

Barty Crouch had transfigured the body of his father into a stick or a bone or something and buried it. Harry didn't think he could do that.

Maybe he should throw it over the cliff. Or burn it.

Both options left him queasy.

Then one note of a bright, crystalline song fell from the sky like a star. It shivered down his spine, drowning out the wildness of the storm winds and thunder with a cool, crystalline perfection, and turned the leaden horror of this evening into something new and pure and brimming with light.

He looked up.

Perched on the rock closest to the dolmen, looking shabbier than Harry could ever remember seeing him, was -

"Fawkes…" Harry breathed.

The phoenix cocked its head, peering down at Harry with eyes that were weary and dull.

OoOOoo

A/N: Cheers to reviewers: Enahma (thanks, and I hope I'm not about to move too far into the territory of one of your stories – not saying which one, as that's a giveaway! – in the next chapters), Neotoma (hope this answered your question to your satisfaction), Oya (I would have labelled it a deathfic, and can you imagine me killing off Snape? Ha! Percy, maybe, hee hee), Stocktonwood (ta!), Persephone Lupin (here's that phoenix!), excessivelyperky (yes, roll on that third side. And I still see Harry as a bit of a hero… which means facing up to facts he doesn't like. Think maybe one day he'll grow up and get over that whole 'Slytherin Menace' thing? Well, maybe he's not _that_ much of a hero, heh. Are you writing again yet? Need to check your site…this isn't the place to harangue other writers to do more writing… it's meant to be about ME! Otherwise this A/N would be a heck of a lot longer, I can tell you), LM (poor Harry, poor Sev, poor readers!), Silverthreads (ta – I hope this chapter wasn't too wishy-washy), duj (not quite – the title source is coming up in the next chapter), SirJimmy7 (many thanks, kind Sir), illicitgrace (I'd love to know what they were as this needs a re-write, but I'm not arguing with wet nails at 1 am).

Thanks, people. I'll try to get this finished ASAP. I've got most of it done but it keeps getting longer as unexpected people come charging in from stage right. You'll see in the next chapter what I mean. I mean, honestly, who does _that_ woman think she is, wandering into _my_ story and turning herself into a major player?


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: None of those associated with Hogwarts and its environs are my property (beyond paying for the books, of course). I am merely playing with JKR's toys and promise to return them unharmed. Well, maybe a little singed, but that can't be helped.

Warning: This story contains gigantic, humungous spoilers of HBP. If you haven't read it, what are you waiting for? Go and read something by a real author.

Oh, and this particular plot device isn't that original, either. I haven't seen it in fanfiction, though… see the final A/Ns for details.

ooOOoo

Harry hadn't realised he'd covered his face until Fawkes was sitting on his shoulder, preening his hair. Shaking, he lowered his hands, careful not to move too fast and unbalance the phoenix. Fawkes wasn't heavy, but he was big. Harry had always considered the bulk mainly feathers, but now that the phoenix was in such a bad condition (even worse than the first time he'd seen it) he could see how odd that light weight was. Harry should have been staggered when the bird landed on him, both be the weight and the heat the phoenix always radiated. But instead the bird was no heavier than Hedwig, and the heat the bird put out only comforted him. Under the light of the globe the tarnished gold tail-feathers seemed to ripple with heat rather than wind. Crouching, the bird's head was still higher than Harry's. "Fawkes," he whispered again. "Why have you returned?"

Fawkes was steaming under the occasional rain drop. And his eyes were ancient now that Harry could see them up close. For a moment he'd thought he was looking into Snape's eyes for the first time again: dull, black eyes that made all the hairs prickle up the back of his neck. But when Harry looked deeper he saw that they held an infinite sadness and… and something else Harry couldn't name. A burden, perhaps, but not one that was unworthy of a phoenix.

The phoenix gave Harry's messy hair a final, affectionate sweep with its beak and hopped down onto the dolmen, where it perched on Snape's corpse. The phoenix looked up at Harry one last time and Harry, who was never sure later if it was the tilt of the phoenix's head or the steam rising from its ragged, drooping feathers, turned and ran for his life.

He dived through a crack in the surrounding stones and was just rolling behind a small boulder when there was a huge WHUMPH!

A pillar of fire roared into the sky.

The light of the fire reflected gold off the low clouds, lighting up the world with a light that was both softer and stronger than lightning could ever be.

And when it died, something in Harry died, too.

He'd seen Fawkes on a burning day before. He'd seen him burn. But this volcanic, promethean heat that burned the rain before it fell from the clouds wasn't something he could expect from Fawkes.

Just how much had Fawkes missed his master?

He knew he needed to get the hell out of this place. He knew that it was stupid to go back.

He knew any self-respecting Death Eater would be coming to investigate the source of the fire.

He knew he shouldn't be crawling back through the crack in the rocks.

He knew he shouldn't be expecting anything.

He knew…

He didn't know what he knew, but he found it.

He heard it first: a high, thin wail that died away to a gurgle followed by a slightly more robust cheeping.

Then he saw it in the dying light of Snape's lightglobe. 

Them.

Ash swirled around the newly-hatched chick and the baby so young its umbilical cord was still shrivelling at its navel. Some of the ash was picked up in the wind and drifted over the baby's face.

Frightened it would choke the baby, Harry stumbled forward and picked up baby and chick. He wiped the ash away from the baby's face as gently as he could considering how badly his hands were trembling, and noticed in passing that the eyes were a pale, milky blue. That was weird. For a minute he'd thought Snape had been somehow reborn. But if it wasn't Snape, then where the hell had this baby come from? He tucked both babies carefully into his robes, leaning over to shelter them from the rain that was now coming in fits and starts. One drop hit him straight in the ear hole and he winced and pulled a face.

"Now that looks familiar," drawled a voice.

Stepping out from the crack in the rock, the Death Eater pulled back his hood to show a head of smooth, platinum hair. 

Harry wasn't surprised when the mask came down to reveal the face of Draco Malfoy.

ooOOoo

Draco's wand stayed pointing steadily at Harry. Harry, who had frozen, knew that if he moved it was likely Malfoy would hex the baby and Fawkes. Malfoy's face was even colder with hate than that day on the train when he'd broken Harry's nose. Maybe he hadn't been able to kill Dumbledore, but the odds were good he'd find it within himself to kill Harry.

Harry couldn't allow that. Especially not now that he had news to share with the world. He tightened his arms. It wasn't much, but the baby began to whimper. 

"Lightning shouldn't reach so low in these parts," Malfoy said, just loud enough to be heard over the wind. "And it shouldn't strike in the same place over and over… and then… and then I don't know what the hell that light was meant to be." Draco's pale lips thinned. "What the hell did you do to him?" he hissed.

"I…" Harry gaped at the sheer injustice of the universe.

Then he gaped at the sheer impossibility of the universe as Draco's eyes widened and went blank and a second hooded, masked figure stepped out from behind him

Impossibility piled on impossibility as the new Death Eater pulled back his hood and – no, Harry realised: _her_ hood. Long, pale hair flickered in the dim globe light and whirled up and around in the wind like the flame of a candle. And when pale, elegant fingers reached up to take the mask, Harry whispered, "Mrs Malfoy, what a surprise. I suppose it shouldn't be, but it is."

Narcissa nodded as she tucked her mask into her robes. Despite her hair flowing around her face and shoulders, she wasn't distracted and kept her wand trained on Harry. "Mr Potter." A flick of her wand put up a transparent cover that kept out the rain. As soon as the wind dropped, her hair fell back into place like the finest silk. Harry might have envied her that trick, but he was too busy trying to work out what his choices were.

He chose to be polite, but had barely opened his mouth when he was turned to stone. He could only hope it wasn't literally, as the spell was non-verbal. "Sorry, Draco," she said softly, stroking her son's head. Still mesmerised by another spell Harry hadn't heard, Draco didn't blink as his mother put her wand to his head and spooled out a strand of silvery memory. It coiled into her hand and she tucked that, too away in her robes. "But I can't let you remember this. Not yet. Later, perhaps… I'll keep it safe for later." Then, with a wave of her wand, the baby (but not Fawkes) was levitated over to Narcissa.

Held in place by her immobilising spell, Harry could only watch and fume.

For a moment she lost her arrogant disdain for the world and smiled down wryly at the baby, who screwed up his own face. "Severus," she sighed. "Even as a baby no-one could call you adorable. Disagreeable, yes, but never adorable." She jounced him gently and looked up at Harry again. If he hadn't been held so solidly, he would have flinched at the cold assessment in her pale eyes. He'd always thought Draco had inherited his eyes from his father and perhaps that was right. Draco, for all his faults, was fairly sane, as was Lucius. But beyond the frozen surface of Narcissa something burned hotter than Fawkes. Confronted with it like this, it wasn't hard to remember that her sister was Bellatrix LeStrange. 

Harry really, _really _ didn't want a mind like that digging around in his, especially as she stepped closer and lifted her wand. Last year he'd been on eye level with her, but he must have grown a couple of inches since then. Somehow his extra height didn't make his feel any less intimidated and the skin between his shoulders crawled with cold sweat. 

He tried to say "_Occlumens"_ in his mind, but without his wand there was no way to stop the icicle of Narcissa's mind boring into his and then he could feel it and he knew:

Although she kept her own feelings extremely well hidden, she went so deep into his mind that Harry managed to sense from her the faintest wisp that told him someone had at some stage frightened her down to the heart and bone and core of her being. And Harry hoped wasn't himself because that terror had, in turn, royally pissed this woman off.

Krakatoa had nothing on what was seething beneath her calm surface.

She flicked through his memories in an instant and looked down at the baby again with a sigh. 

"Ah. So you _were_ the spy. Dear, dear, Severus… What is it with you and ambiguity? Well, that's of no matter now…" She shook her head, bent down and kissed the baby's brow. Then, to Harry's amazement, she flicked her wand and he was free.

"So," she said. "You know."

Harry flexed his elbow, which had locked in position. "I seem to know very little. And that's not Snape – look at the eyes." He'd half-wondered if somehow Fawkes had used Snape's death to resurrect Dumbledore, but the idea was so horrific Harry's mind shied away from it. But where, then, had this blue-eyed baby come from? Narcissa kept calling him Severus and part of Harry desperately wanted it to be true to prove that there was still some balance left in the world. But hope was a dirty trick and Harry had learned it was better to do without it.

Narcissa's lips curved in what could be a smile, but it barely grazed her eyes. "You know the important things. You may not know that a new-born baby has blue eyes, but you know you've just lost a spy."

"It's Snape?"

Narcissa snorted. Elegantly, of course. "Of course. I can feel the last of his signature magic. It's changing fast and soon it will be unrecognisable, but for the next few minutes it remains distinct."

"Give him back."

"No." She smiled.

Now was _not_ a good time to be impolite: Harry forced himself to keep his temper and his terror under check. Strange that he should feel so protective of someone he'd spent the last seven years loathing. It wasn't just because the someone was now a helpless baby. If that helpless baby had been Voldemort, Harry wouldn't have hesitated in stomping it into the ground. Maybe it was because he had one last chance to prove to himself that Dumbledore hadn't been a complete idiot to trust some skinny kid whose main claim to fame was weird scar… or been suicidally wrong to trust implicitly the most in-your-face, day-to-day evil man Harry knew. It was also, perhaps, the last chance Harry had of proving Dumbledore hadn't made cruel decisions lightly. Like the Dursleys. And the miscast Killing Curse. 

"Please."

"Still no." Narcissa's face had the controlled intensity of a cat with a half-dead mouse, waiting to see which direction it would twitch in next.

Harry decided to oblige her. Silence might just annoy her, anyway. He decided to dangle a little bait, just to see what the reaction would be. "I… I know most of the Horcruxes are destroyed now."

Distaste thinned her lips back into the expression he was familiar with. "Good riddance to bad Riddle rubbish." Well, that hadn't been the reaction Harry had considered. She reached out and, with a quick twitch of a wand the same colour as her hair, Draco was hidden by a thick black cloud.

"What – are you keeping secrets from your son, now?"

Narcissa narrowed her eyes. "Don't be impertinent. He's seventeen and thinks he's old enough to rule the world. Not unlike someone I'm talking to right at this very moment. But, like this someone, he's not old enough to cope with the subtleties and work out when someone is a friend and someone is an enemy. Here." 

Harry took the baby she gently laid in his arms.

"And close your mouth. There may be no flies, but it's the principle of the thing. I'm going to make a deal with you, young Mr Potter."

"Oh? And what's in it for me?"

"Your life. Now and future."

"You think you could kill me?"

This time the smile did reach her eyes, and Harry didn't like it one bit. It felt like he was at the wrong end of the microscope. "Oh, Harry," she purred, "I _know_ I could kill you. Now that you don't have the seeds of a Horcrux the Dark Lord has just lifted the restriction on Harry-hunting. But I'm hoping this is the moment when you prove you've grown up enough this year to know the difference between an enemy and an enemy who can work with you for a common goal."

"What? Knock off Voldemort?"

The smile widened to show a glimpse of perfect teeth, almost covering her wince at his use of the 'V"-word. It reminded him obscurely of Ginny about to go incandescent with rage. Harry felt his knees tremble, but didn't think it was from fear. What was it about dangerous women that made his knees tremble (but not from fear)? "He _threatened_ my _son,_" she whispered. "Lucius and Draco may covet power, but the only thing in my life that holds any real value for me is _my son._"

Harry licked his lips nervously, thinking back to the times he'd hexed Malfoy into near oblivion, and cast a glimpse at the pillar of darkness hiding Draco.

"You of all people," Narcissa continued softly and without giving any indication she knew the direction of his thoughts, "should have taught He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named that threatening children in front of their mothers can be hazardous for one's health." Her eyes gleamed and Harry decided on the spot that she and her sister Bellatrix definitely had insanity in common. "He threatened my baby and no-one – _no-one!_ – does that. Severus knew that. He knew he had to help me. I think," she said, her eyes narrowing again, but this time with speculation rather than fury as she glanced at the baby who seemed to have fallen asleep in Harry's arms, "I think he did out of genuine affection for Draco, but, Severus being Severus, I expect he saw this coming. And knew you'd need another source of information. Oh, close your mouth," she added irritably as Harry opened it to tell her she must be crazy if she thought he'd trust her in any way, shape or form. "You'll find out soon enough. But," she added, raising a slender finger, "it comes with the price of immunity for myself and Draco. And Lucius, if he doesn't damn himself too irrevocably."

"Not dearest Bella?" Harry kicked himself. But Narcissa only looked at him like he'd said something mildly amusing and might get a pat on the head for his cute little antics.

"I think it would take Merlin himself to extricate her from this mess and she was happy enough embroil Draco up to his neck in this mess. No. I am realistic. And furthermore I need your word that you will do your utmost for Severus. I can only hope Lucius stays in Azkaban a little longer and keeps out of this whole mess, but Draco is not a killer" – Harry had doubts on that one but was pretty sure mentioning them at this time would be pretty bad as the spectrum of bad ideas went – "and I won't allow him to be tried as such. The Dark Lord would have used him to make the next Horcrux if it wasn't for Severus. Draco… he's many things… but he's not a killer."

Harry nodded. "Then, on Draco's life, the information you give myself and those opposing Voldemort will be true and not used for the deceit of myself or those opposing Voldemort."

She smiled. "Spoken like a true lawyer. I believe you've found your calling." She held out her hand.

After readjusting the baby and his opinion on whether she'd just insulted him into "probably not", Harry took it and they shook on it. A small shiver of magic ran up his arm as the bargain was sealed.

"But you can't expect me to believe Draco will help," he said.

Narcissa shook her head. "He has the makings of an Occlumens as great as Severus, but he's still only a boy. He couldn't possibly shield himself against the Dark Lord. And I wouldn't ask him to. I will… take the information from his mind. Discretely. He's not serving the Dark Lord willingly, you know. That makes it all the easier for me. And the Dark Lord will never know." She glanced over at the shrouded form of her son. 

Harry could have hexed her and escaped in that moment, but he didn't. "So have you got any information for me now?"

"In nine days the Dark Lord will hold an initiation for new members."

"I… got that much from Snape. But I didn't quite find out where."

"The old Riddle manor. Well, nearby. I think some old house has some significance for him." She made a moue. "You will have to find that out for yourself, I'm afraid."

Harry nodded. "It's where his mum grew up. And he took the locket from his uncle and turned it into a Horcrux." And now it was locked in a box in Sirius' old house… right next to the fake locket Dumbledore had died for.

The baby seemed to sense Harry's dark thoughts, or maybe Harry was simply holding him too tight. He began to cry.

Narcissa gave Harry a look like he was mentally as well as morally challenged and fished around inside the neck of her robes, finally pulling out a long shawl. "Give him to me."

She took the baby and wrapped the shawl around him. It flowed like pearly silk… or like memory in a pensieve. "My grandmother's Pashmina," Narcissa murmured as she tucked the ends of the soft material snug around the baby, who whimpered. "Made from the beards of yetis. Nothing softer, nothing warmer… and never has there been a more expensive nappy," she finished with a genuine smile that put a faint warmth in her alabaster cheeks. "Can you get into the house? The wards will be phenomenally strong. We – the Death Eaters, that is – will have to Apparate through on the strength of our Marks. I'll get what information I can for you from Lucius, but his mail is a little tardy at present. "

Harry, mindful of what he carried in his pocket, nodded. "I'm sure I can arrange something. Try and let me know where all the Death Eaters will be arranged, and what each is capable."

"That, I think I can manage. I'll let you know what else seems pertinent and non-damning for myself or Draco." Another kiss hushed the baby. "Really, Severus; the things I do for you."

She handed the baby back to Harry and tapped Fawkes on the beak. The chick regarded her blearily. "Fawkes, I presume. Hmm. I wonder why Dumbledore didn't…? Never mind. Have you found yourself a new master, then, phoenix?"

"Dumbledore didn't what?"

"Dumbledore should have used the phoenix for himself. But perhaps that part of the legend is true – you can only ask for the regeneration of another, and only if that person is worthy of the phoenix's gift. And that person must have died without expecting the phoenix's intervention. It's an ancient story, Mr Potter – older than wizards, older than speech; and it's the oldest magic of all. Dumbledore… I suppose this is your way of redeeming yourself…" She seemed to have forgotten she was meant to be talking to Harry.

"Avada Kedavra? So it's true…? Snape was dying from it?" Harry didn't know why he should be so relieved at outside confirmation that Snape had chosen a lingering death. It didn't please him for the same reason he would have chosen this morning.

"Yes. Nasty way to go. I expect it came as a bit of a relief," she added casually, as if having borderline-suicidal friends was perfectly ordinary. Harry's mouth tightened. Narcissa didn't appear to notice, or perhaps she did and considered Harry's feelings on the matter unimportant. "I always thought it was final proof of Dumbledore's cruelty. But perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps Dumbledore did Severus one final favour after all. If so, bless him for it." Her mouth pursed slightly and she trailed her fingertips over Severus' cheek. The baby turned his head towards the touch instinctively, and Narcissa's lips softened as her eyes grew sharper. "If you need anything for him, anything at all, contact me through Gringott's. If you need money for him, you can have what you want. Within reason, of course. Money, Mr Potter, is not the issue. If I wanted a home bought for him I'd do it myself. But he needs loving parents. Ones that need to be open-minded where birds that spontaneously combust from time-to-time are pets, perhaps. See to it."

Did she think Harry was just going to magic them up out of thin air? "I'll do what I can."

Her jaw tightened and ice glittered in her eyes. "Do what is best for him. That is part of the bargain."

"Of course. Um, you may not have noticed, but there _is_ a war on and things are a tad tricky at the moment."

She lifted her chin and regarded him coolly, as if he was too young to attempt sarcasm… especially such poor sarcasm. Considering she'd known Snape, it wasn't surprising she should be a connoisseur. "Which is why I suggest you find him a family off-Isle. Enrol him at Beauxbatons. Not Durmstrang. And definitely _not_ Hogwarts. English he may be, but precious little good it ever did him. Alive and happy I would rather he stay… or become."

Harry nodded formally.

"We are agreed?"

"Yes," Harry replied shortly, becoming annoyed at her haughty manner. "But not because you're going to spy for us. Because…"

"Because you're a Gryffindor and you know when something is owed? Oh, please. Gryffindors have _no_ concept of obligation and payback." She tossed her hair over her shoulder. Bending over the baby to check its face would be protected from the storm, Narcissa Malfoy was so close Harry could smell her perfume.

"As you wish." Harry wasn't in the mood for the old "Gryffindor versus Slytherin" argument. Nor was he in the mood to be patronised by Draco's mum. Although he did have the unsettlingly strong urge to kiss her… just to see if he could and, perhaps, just to see if she would let him.

Dangerous thoughts. If he kissed a snake at least he'd be able to reason it out of biting him for his presumption. And it wouldn't tell Ginny out of spite. 

As if he could measure her strength up with a kiss, anyway.

It must have been the perfume. 

Narcissa had turned away and the moment (if there had ever been one) was lost. She looked up as lightning turned the world white for the merest twitch of an eye. And she laughed, her voice drowned in the massive following boom of thunder that made the stones tremble and the baby cry.

Harry looked up, too. For a moment he'd thought something could be made out in the shapes. Something… he never did find out what it was. He jiggled the baby, shushing it until it stopped fussing. He peered upwards again, but he'd missed it, whatever it was. The clouds had moved on and the rain pattered on the transparent, magical roof.

But Narcissa seemed to know, and she laughed again, low and melodious, and Harry wondered again how hard she would hex him for kissing her. 

"Severus," she said. "Only you would put your Patronus in a storm. How in the world did you manage it, though? I thought lightning went only one way…?"

Harry squinted up at the roiling clouds again. Rain was falling in earnest now, splattering and rolling off the dome Narcissa had put up to protect them. Yes – for a moment there he thought he'd caught it. "What was it?" He had to speak up as the rain was becoming very loud.

"Ah, ah. That was Severus' secret, not mine. Besides, I don't know the proper name of whatever it was and I wouldn't demean it with a description. But I think we need not worry anymore about that little Dementor breeding programme the Dark Lord was working on."

She waved her wand and the black cloud surrounding Draco dispersed. "Remind me to thank your Weasley friends for that one," she mused, her upper lip curling. "Their little joke shop has been ever so useful to me. And, I believe, they were the ones who put that Montague boy in the cabinet… and that boy was later able to tell Draco about how there were two connecting cabinets. So Draco decided perhaps they could bypass the Hogwarts security and, once they were fixed, he was proven right and used the cabinets to get the Dark Lord's forces into the castle. Really, you should thank those boys sometime and remind them that caveat emptor – 'buyer beware' – should, in their case, read caveat venditor – 'purveyor beware'," she smirked nastily, and Harry remembered why he really didn't want to kiss her at all. Then her expression smoothed as she touched her son's cheek, ignoring the muscle that was twitching in Harry's own cheek. It wasn't that she had said something against Fred and George – it was the way she had a point. And the subtle suggestion that blackmail could be used against the Weasleys at a time of her choosing.

If Harry played the situation right, that time would not arise.

"And how are you going to make Draco help us?"

"Like this." And she inclined her head to whisper in her son's ear. Draco's expression didn't change, but he blinked more often.

Narcissa straightened, resting one finger on the top of his head. "Potter jinxed you and escaped as you came in here. You managed to retrieve a smidgen of the ashes" – she took a pinch of the ash on the dolmen and placed it in his shirt pocket – "just enough to prove it was Severus Snape who died here and… oh, yes: Potter shouted something revoltingly trite like 'So end all traitors, ha ha ha' as he ran…"

Harry winced. More that she'd thought he'd say something that clichéd than at the way she'd so casually picked up dust from a dead person.

"… and then I got here, unjinxed you, and we chased Potter to the edge of the anti-Apparition shield. We were just in time to see him vanish."

She drew her index finger down the centre of Draco's face from widow's peak over nose and down to the tip of his chin. Draco blinked, as if he was struggling to come back from several fathoms deep.

Narcissa looked over her shoulder. "Well?" she growled, turning so that her robes swirled around her ankles. "Why are you still here? Take Severus and run. Oh – and give him a new name, for pity's sake! Anyone named 'Severus' will have enemies from here until the end of eternity… no matter what side they fought on."

Harry swallowed, holding the baby closer. "Right. Gringott's, then… I'll leave a note for you under the name 'Caminus'."

With a glance at the scorched capstone, Narcissa said, "'Forge'? Fair enough. I shall reply under the name 'Lethe'."

"Huh. Forgive and 'forget'?"

"Perhaps. But not for us." Her eyes dropped to the sleeping baby meaningfully.

"Lethe it is," Harry agreed. "Wait. Your husband went to Haiti. He bought back a souvenir – a doll. I'd like it."

"You'd… like it."

"Please."

"If I so decide, there will be a certain small parcel for Caminus."

"It would be proof of a good decision if there was a certain small parcel for Caminus. It would be favourable for Lethe and her son, I'm sure." And, as she narrowed her eyes, Harry strode past her, slipping between the rocks and out into the storm.

He ran in a half-crouch to shield the baby from the wind and rain. When Severus whimpered, Harry's heart sank – a crying baby would attract attention, and he didn't know any spells safe enough to cast. But Fawkes cooed and Severus settled, lying snug in Harry's arms. Severus… Not anymore. A new name, Narcissa had said.

That could wait. 

Harry ran on. Rain lashed at his face, beading on his glasses until Harry took them off. It wasn't like the spell to see in the dark had lasted Snape's attack, anyway. The rain hit his eyes, but at least he could see… not that there was much to see in the near-pitch black. Lightning was a partial blessing: it lit the world for brief, unpredictable moments and then left him even blinder. But at least he was given a hint of his surroundings. It was enough to orient himself towards the anti-Apparition barrier and away from the cliff. And there was something else about the rain: it was taking something away – a weight that Harry had had for so long he'd forgotten it was there, and in the process he felt like his heart was becoming lighter. He opened his mouth to pant and the rain touched his tongue. It tasted like spring and the promise of a bountiful summer to follow. 

"Argh!" He tripped over a rock and caught his balance again just in time. With a muffled oath and sudden memory of a charm Hermione had taught him for those Quidditch games played in the rain, he wiped his glasses off, cast the charm, and put them back on again.

Much better.

He looked back once and saw Narcissa flicker once, twice, three times in half a second, standing in a flash of lightning with her hair streaming out sideways and her hands clasped before her like she was holding a white dove. Her hair wove like palest witchfire, but the pale hands held steady.

That sight stayed in his dreams for a long, long time after the war ended.

ooOOoo

A/N: Warning! Next chapter (final chapter which would have been part of this one but it got too long) is more boring blah blah. If you want more action and adventure rather than some skinny kid trying to get to grips with the quagmire of role-models needed for being a hero, I recommend something else. (Rabbit has finally finished her intricately imaginative story "Balance", for example.)

Lethe is the mysterious river of forgetfulness. According to that chronicler of human highs and lows, Terry Pratchett, explorers who got there would be dying of thirst and take a drink and, well, I guess you see why it's still mysterious. Why Narcissa came wandering into my story is anyone's guess. I suppose I like writing mentally unstable but glamorous women. Don't know what that says about my inner reality…

Cheers to reviewers: Persephone Lupin: don't you love phoenixes? I do. And yes (lol), you spotted the Dark Mark key. Points to your House.  
Oya: don't worry, I like Sev and Albus too much to destroy them like that (smiles) Glad you liked Snape not strangling Trewlawney. That was fun to write.  
Hotcocoalatte: I don't like unhappy endings. I prefer something kinda sappy…  
SirJimmy7: hope this helped. Sorry, but I'm not going to have Voldie in this (so consider yourself warned), partly because I wanted this story to be about Harry dealing with Snape and didn't want to get into anything longer, and also partly because I always want to write Voldie twirling a moustache and going "Nyah-ha-haa! Tie Harry to the railway tracks!" which just doesn't work.  
Silverthreads: thanks. I was trying to get that fine line between writing something tactile and being completely gross. As a biologist (yeah, I'm a teacher now, but you never stop being a biologist – one of my students told me last week I explain cancer like it's a person), it's a tricky one because my ideas of good taste are completely out of whack with most people's.  
bookwyrm: one slice of justice coming up. And you don't like Harry? Well, I'm trying to write him learning to be more open-minded. Let me know how well I succeed (or otherwise), please.  
excessivelyperky: Sometimes hope wins out (grins). Well, in fiction, anyway.  
Paula: thank you very much!  
Enahma: I'm not agreeing with your husband or anything, but…! ;-P I know. Life gets pretty hectic (and yes, I've had next to no time for reading fanfic and things are about to get VERY busy at work). I'm flattered you're keeping up with this (by the by, what are the other two fics you're reading, just in case I get some time?).  
duj: yes. It's a little disquieting how easy it was to write.  
Nemo Returning: Snape Returning. Not as Snape, though. Good idea or bad? I should take a poll on that one…  
Kateri1: hope you still like it… it's not going to be all that exciting in the last chapter, where it's just finishing off a few details and leaving others open.  
samson28: thanks… I think ;-) Hope you don't mind the last two chapters, as the tone is quite different. (I seem to be saying that a lot in this A/N).


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: None of those associated with Hogwarts and its environs are my property (beyond paying for the books, of course). I am merely playing with JKR's toys and promise to return them unharmed. Well, maybe a little singed, but that can't be helped.

Warning: This story contains gigantic, humungous spoilers of HBP. If you haven't read it, what are you waiting for? Go and read something by a real author.

Oh, and this particular plot device isn't that original, either. I haven't seen it in fanfiction, though… see the final A/Ns for details.

ooOOoo

The storm lasted three days and four nights and covered all of the British Isles from the Shetland and Orkney islands down to Land's End. Harry may have been soaked to the bone by the time he made it back to the order, but by some miracle he managed to keep the baby and the phoenix dry. He was cold, and as soon as he found himself inside the cheerful kitchen of the latest headquarters his shivers degenerated into shudders. Kingsley diagnosed delayed reaction to shock and sent Harry to bed after Harry got a short version of the story out through chattering teeth. Harry wouldn't sleep, though, not until the baby and Fawkes were sleeping in a make-shift cot next to his bed. And although the baby slept through the thunder and lightning, Harry found that when the storm woke him (as it did those three nights) he'd sleep better afterwards if he checked that Fawkes and the baby were still safe. One time he looked into the cot and saw two small, scorched skeletons, but when he woke up gasping from that nightmare he found nothing amiss. The sleeping baby had one hand curled up next to its head. Harry touched the palm and was reminded of one of Snape's memories when the tiny fingers automatically closed around one of his like a sea-anemone. He wondered with a yawn who that memory-baby had been, and drifted off into a dream where he kept trying to reach out and pull Snape out of the dissolving nothingness… but the rules of the tournament said he was only allowed to grab one of Snape's fingers.

Harry stayed inside those three days, too; writing letters to Ginny he couldn't send until the weather had calmed down enough for Hedwig to fly and only opening the window of his garret bedroom occasionally to poke his head out and feel the rain on his face and in his hair. But he went downstairs often enough to add his voice to the meetings.

By day three there had already been a few messages from "Lethe". The first was interesting, to say the least. Apparently Voldemort was livid on two accounts: Firstly, Snape was dead and, secondly and even worse, all the books and notes he'd owned had vanished. None of the Death Eaters knew where, and Voldemort had been driven into a frothing fit by their lack of results. Harry wished, occasionally, he still had his scar and the connection to Voldemort. Voldemort foaming at the mouth and chewing the carpets would have been something to see. Early on the third morning, Kingsley went to Gringott's and found a box with a small voodoo poppet. The poppet looked more than a little like someone of Harry's acquaintance, and the short note which came with it gave brief details on the effects of a clear potion found by the half-a-dozen Death Eaters who'd cleared out Snape's workroom.

According to Lethe, the Death Eaters had been foolish enough to sample the contents of a wine bottle with its illegible label. The effects had been nasty and – according to the few surviving witness – contagious through line-of-sight. The initial half-dozen Death Eaters had taken out seventy-one others before the area had been sealed and anyone inside left to die (here, Lethe included a list of names, some of them high-ranking and powerful enough for Remus and Kingsley to high-five each other before remembering their solemnity – death was death, after all). Narcissa herself and Draco were spared. Because Draco and his mother had been sighted briefly in France by Tonks (who was working in with some werewolves from Breton, whom had a very different idea of werewolf superiority to the majority of the British werewolves), Harry suspected Narcissa, knowing Snape well enough to suspect anything he'd made, touched, looked at or heard about, had taken Draco away for a couple of days while the storm still raged to console him over the loss of his professor – and get the hell away from any fall-out. Harry had occasionally (like when he'd woken from a nightmare of charred flesh and bone crumbling under his touch) wondered how much of Draco's memory Narcissa had excised. Not that he was fond of Malfoy in any way, shape or form, but he wouldn't wish the memory of Snape's charred face and hands on his worst enemy. Which wasn't, currently, Draco.

Shame Voldemort hadn't been in the line-of-sight of the infected Death Eaters… Snape's potion might have given him a run for his money. Harry wondered if Voldemort suspected Snape, but Lethe's notes suggested otherwise. Voldemort was furious with Harry for taking down one of his chief advisors. Harry read that as meaning Snape was still considered a loyal Death Eater. Even despite the potion.

"But how were they ever stupid enough to drink something out of a musty old bottle that wasn't labelled properly?" Harry asked, yawning. He'd just given Kingsley the box to take back with the Pashmina inside it. It was the evening of the third day and he felt in need of company that could carry the other half of a conversation. Harry had been stuck inside for three days, someone had bought cleaning spray from a Muggle supermarket and now the house smelt like the Dursleys', Harry was the only one who could cook and he hated cooking, the clock in the corner ticked arrhythmically and was about to send him psychotic … and if Remus didn't say something interesting and significantly above an IQ level of fifteen in the next three seconds there would be Trouble.

The sight of Remus Lupin tickling the baby's fingers and toes did make him smile, though. Remus was in a particularly good mood and had been since yesterday, when Rosmerta sent a message via Minerva to let him know she'd found something addressed to him personally. That "something" had turned out to be a pallet of cola tins. Remus had opened one of them and gagged at the vile smell but then, as he later told Harry, half a minute later when he stopped blinking from the sheer shock of disbelief, he'd actually danced a little dance of joy. In the tins was enough wolfsbane for the next year, by which time someone from the Ministry or Hermione (who was in raptures after the discovery, especially as she had found her calling this year and was fast on the way to becoming this age's great research witch) should be able to make sense of the typed note that accompanied it and which gave directions on how it could be made large-scale in batches, something no-one had done before.

Hermione had been very interested in the note. She had received a note, too, written on a Muggle typewriter which by some massive coincidence had the same blurred e key.

Harry wondered how many notes would eventually turn up with dodgy e's.

Remus gently extricated his finger from one grasping, pudgy baby-fist. "I suspect Snape put something on it to make them think it was perfectly safe… and something he'd been saving for a special occasion. It's what I would have done, had I been in a particularly nasty frame of mind." Remus smiled as tiny fingers curled around the tip of one of his square fingers, which was stained with ink again. He'd been writing a lot of letters to Tonks and, unlike Harry's letter to Ginny, Remus could justify the expense of secure, cross-border floo deliveries. Harry propped his chin on his hand and wondered if they would make good parents for the baby. Maybe not. Remus never said as much, but Harry knew from something Tonks had accidentally dropped (words that time instead of a set of dinner plates) that he wanted children of his own line. "Is that what you did, hmm?" Remus said to the baby. He tickled the pink sole of one foot, which kicked as if it was controlled by something completely outside of the brain.

"Is that normal? The… way he kicks, that is. Obviously going around poisoning people isn't normal in a healthy society, although given that Snape was involvedI guess that was pretty normal behaviour… He's… not got some nerve problem or something…?"

Remus looked up, expression lightly amused at Harry's concern. He'd taken to wearing half-moon glasses recently and it was a look Harry was still adjusting to. Especially given how much greyer Remus had gone since Dumbledore's death. "Hmm? Oh, yes. Babies don't have much control over their bodies. But he can follow my face. See…? Oh, he's fallen asleep again. Well, never mind. Where's Fawkes? Funny how the baby sleeps better with a phoenix as a teddy."

Funny, too, how those few who in the know referred to him as "the baby" rather than "Severus". Harry wasn't sure if it was because they were made uncomfortable by reminders of the baby's former identity, or if they were trying to actively embrace this new incarnation. He hoped it was the second, but cynicism made a good argument for the first.

All in all, it was a bit of a worry finding a home for a baby. Harry refused to put Severus – whatever his name was going to be – in an orphanage. Of course the older members of the Order would try to make the decision, but Harry would sooner kidnap the baby and run off to Australia and live in the Outback with wild dingoes before he left this baby in an orphanage. Or with Dursley-equivalents. And not just because Narcissa might send him dangerously flawed information as revenge. Thankfully, Hermione had sent a second, optimistic, message through the floo last night, so dingoes and Dursleys probably wouldn't be involved. Hermione – always one for coming through in a pinch. Apart from Remus, Kingsley, Tonks and McGonagall (who, when Harry had finally judged her ready to see the baby without hexing it, had picked it up and burst into tears), Narcissa and possibly Draco (but hopefully not), the only others who knew were Hermione and Ron.

Harry wouldn't have it any other way.

ooOOoo

Late in the morning of the fourth day, Harry took the baby and Fawkes and slipped out the back door. He'd stayed long enough to hear Lethe's message (which told of the mysterious death of Wormtail, who'd somehow accidentally had his head pop off followed by his arms and legs. Quite messy, by all accounts. Lethe wondered if Caminus had anything to say regarding what had happened. But Harry decided not to enlighten her on the cause of the mystery. He was still trying to work out how he felt now that he was officially (in his mind, anyway) a murderer, and how that separated him from a Death Eater. He didn't want Lethe rubbing his nose in the fact. It was a shame he couldn't talk to Remus about it, but how did you open up a conversation like that? "Uh, Remus? Did I mention that the voodoo poppet I decapitated, dismembered, and threw in the fire was a sympathetic magic representation of your old schoolmate? No?" Harry didn't think he could cope with anyone thinking him capable of it, even though they'd been setting him up for years to kill Voldemort.

What would Narcissa do with the information? She should be able to work it out herself, considering Lethe was the one who'd given Harry the poppet. With a bit of luck she'd take it as a warning on how far Harry couldn't be pushed.

But he still wished he could talk to someone about it.

Maybe he should stay and talk to Remus?

No. He had an appointment to keep. And it was his secret – his to deal with, his to weather.

This was something Hermione and Ron needn't know about, either, he told himself as he the catch of the door clicked shut behind him.

For that matter, he didn't tell Remus or anyone else where he and the baby were going – the fewer people who knew, he considered, the better. Outside in an otherwise dingy alley, Harry bent down to the baby and whispered, "Hey, I'm a murderer. I killed someone without really being sure it would work, but he died and my intention was certainly there. So I'm a murderer. Should I do anything about it? What" – he swallowed – "did you do? Oh yeah." Harry's shoulders sagged. "You died for it."

Talking about it didn't help, no. But then the phoenix chick chirped a small bubble of sound that popped in Harry's heart. It woke the baby, who didn't cry, but merely opened sleepy eyes to peer up at Harry before yawning in a display of toothless gums that really shouldn't have been as endearing as it was… and nodded off again.

Harry shook his head, lifted his face to the sky and breathed deep. The morning was good. It was fresh. It was new. Even the front page of a local paper, blown into a puddle so that only half the print was legible, cried out the good news: the first blue sky over Liverpool in a year. That mist which had hung for the better part of the year and been blamed for the massive rise in suicides had vanished. The blue sky wasn't expected to last long, especially this early in the year, but…

Stepping over the newspaper and puddle with a long stride, Harry felt the mist's absence like he felt the sun warm on his face. In the shadows of the alley behind the temporary base in Liverpool (13 Grimmauld place was being used as the decoy and nothing more), Harry made sure the baby was secure in his arms, and disapparated.

Harry's Apparition skills still needed a little polishing and the baby cried when they arrived, but Fawkes (already sprouting the first red and gold feathers and looking slightly less ugly) sang softly and the baby settled, as he always did.

He was in another alley under another blue sky, but this one was somewhere on the outskirts of London and had the sounds of a busy road coming from just over a grey concrete wall. He could smell diesel mixed in with a faint hint of salt, so he couldn't be too far from the sea. Harry looked around with his hand discretely on his wand. He needn't have worried.

"Hey, you."

"Hermione." She was standing next to a pile of scrap, pretending something so disorderly didn't exist. A massive pack was leaned up against the wall.

He leaned forward and she kissed his cheek. It was a new thing, this cheek-kissing. Something natural that had come after he'd decided to grow up and not return for his seventh year at Hogwarts. Mind you, as the school had closed anyway it wasn't like he was making that much of a stand, but Harry knew in his heart he couldn't have returned until he'd done something about Dumbledore's death.

And now here he was. Not at Hogwarts. Not yet. But on his way back.

"How are the books?"

Hermione glowed. That had been her first message of last night: a courier had showed up with boxes of books. Biographies, histories, books on magic, a first edition of _Hogwarts, a History_… and all of it only accompanied by a short letter addressed to: "The biggest bibliophile I've ever known other than myself" typed with the e's slightly higher than they should be. However many books there had been, the letter said there would be more: but not until Hermione's twenty-first birthday, with the third and final instalment when she turned twenty-eight. All the books had (to Hermione's surprise) been benign at the least and (she'd said in her note to Harry) she'd not have been surprised had he heard her whoops of delight at some of the treasures she'd found.

"What's in the pack? Not the books?"

"No. I didn't think you'd know what a baby needs, so I've been shopping." She ignored Harry's raised eyebrows and unvoiced (but obvious) opinion that she'd bought out the entire shop, and held out her arms. "May I hold him?"

Harry smiled. He'd never thought of Hermione as a baby-person before, but she'd surprised him so often he'd given up pigeon-holing her. "Sure. Here. Remember to support the head…" He grinned at Hermione's familiar expression of amused condescension. "Hey, I've been researching!" he protested.

"Wow, you _have_ changed," she said as she took the baby. "What's our secret ward-word?"

"Huh. 'Death to all Muggles.' Just joking! Sorry. 'Pickled eyeballs.' And I still can't believe _you_ chose it instead of Ron."

"Well, I thought we were all getting a little _too_ grown-up… Hello, Fawkes."

"Where's Ron? I thought he was going to be here."

"I am. Ta-dah!" Harry jumped and spun, then let out his breath and shook his head, grinning. After tucking his wand into his pocket, Ron climbed down from the roof of one of the sheds behind them.

Harry folded his arms. "What – did you think it wasn't me?"

"Werrll, before you gave the pass-ward we thought I should just keep an eye on things. And then you made that crack about me choosing the secret word… So I thought maybe you were Malfoy in disguise."

"I would have called you 'Weasel' or asked Hermione if I could borrow her mirror or something if I was."

"Yeah, that was a major clue as well. So… is that the greasy git? Sorry," he added quickly. Something about Harry's expression must have warned him. Harry clamped down on his anger. If he hadn't been there and seen what he'd seen, maybe he'd say something along the same lines.

How many others would say that – and worse? While part of Harry fumed gently, another part – the part that had had to grow up too fast – took this information and tucked away for future use.

Harry frowned, for a change a little anxious about something in the future that wasn't Voldemort. "It's… someone. He needs a new name, though. And maybe not from you." He flinched as a shadow flickered across the alley, but it was just a starling. And the pocket sneakoscope he'd been given by Moody didn't activate. (The sneakoscope was the latest from the Department of Mysteries boffin, Kew, and it vibrated if someone was telling lies _or_ was directing malevolent intentions towards the holder… plus it doubled as a Muggle cellphone. Harry doubted Arthur Weasley knew about it, but, if he did, he'd turned a blind eye.)

Hermione looked down at the baby, which had a spookily similar expression as it gazed back up. Both looked extremely dubious at the sight of the other. Then Hermione broke the moment by smiling, rocking the baby just enough to make it gurgle. "He can't really see much at this age," she said in her lecturer voice. "All they see are lights and shadows. But, and this is the amazing thing, they can see smiles and frowns. So when you smile at a baby, it…"

"Amazing," said Ron, who was not smiling. "Um, Herm', love, I…"

Hermione widened her eyes at him. "But we've been wanting a baby for ages!"

Ron looked in immediate need of a bezoar.

The baby blew a bubble and yawned. "Oh, that's cute!" Then, taking pity on Ron, Hermione laughed. "Ron, of course I don't want to adopt Snape. Severus… Steven. Yes, Steven. It's a name I've always liked, and it's not too dissimilar. It's also about as Muggle as you get. Besides, we're not married and we'd have to move to another country to look after him. I doubt your mother would approve."

Ron nodded as if he wanted her to think he regretted being unable to adopt the baby. "No, she wouldn't."

Hermione winked at Harry. "Do you have a home for him? It's best if not too many people know. Mrs Malfoy was right – he's going to have enemies on both sides of the fence. Killing enemies."

"I know. And I don't."

"Good."

"'Good'?" Harry and Ron looked at each other.

"Yes, good. Because my parents have wanted another baby for years, but they can't adopt a baby from Great Britain because the government says they're too old now. But if anyone asks, I can tell them that Professor Snape and I were having a raging affair and it's our baby."

Ron's eyes were bugging and he was slowly turning purple. The strangled sounds coming out of the corners of his mouth (along with a few bubbles of spit) sounded like, "You… he… never in my-!… I."

Hermione shrugged. "That's only if the question should come up. I've talked to Mum and Dad about it… Mum was a bit dubious – she asked me if this was the Professor Nazi Hippie chap who'd… well, maybe I'd described him a little that way, but I told her he's now a brand-new baby. The books and the note went a long way towards changing their opinion of him… I guess I'd better not let them see the ones he's going to let me have when I get older, though… And Dad said that tabula rasa was a definite plus, but I think they'd take him on even if he had his memories."

"I don't know about memories, but…" Harry swallowed. He hadn't thought it would be so hard to talk about what had happened. He'd told the basics to a few members of the Order, but at that time he'd been fairly dazed still and it hadn't felt real. Now, something twisted inside him at the memory of that dissolving mind. "He… at the end he had hardly anything left but hate. I wouldn't have thought it possible that anyone, but I don't want your parents taking on anyth- anyone they can't handle."

"We already knew he wasn't a very nice person, Harry," Hermione said, making faces at the baby.

Harry winced. Putting into words what he'd experienced seemed puny and disrespectful, and although he wanted a good home for the baby he also wanted the adoptive parents to know what they were getting into. If for no better reason than forewarned is forearmed. He – the baby, that was – needed parents who would be strong enough to cope with a child who really needed good guidance and a lot of love. "I just think they should know what they're getting into," he finished lamely.

"He's got a point," Ron said, making Harry bristle again even though he knew Ron was being logical.

Harry smoothed down the hairs on the back of his neck as Hermione said, "Mum and Dad are pretty strong. They dealt with me okay – not that I was trouble in the traditional sense, but they had to cope with the sort of support a young Muggle-born witch needs. They're the best choice when you think it through… if you knew them better you'd agree, Harry." Harry ducked his head, conceding the point. He'd never got to know Hermione's parents. He still felt awkward around Muggles – he kept expecting Mr and Mrs Granger to call Hermione a freak. Hermione continued, "They've never told me how badly they wanted another child, but when I told them… well, Mum started crying."

"What is it with babies making people cry?" Harry said. "I would have thought it would be the other way around. But even McGonagall needed a box of tissues yesterday. Why'd your mum start?"

"Probably because she knew she was about to adopt a – what did you call him, again?" asked Ron.

"Oh, hush," said Hermione, bumping her shoulder into his affectionately. "There's a doctor who's friends with Mum and Dad. I can fake some symptoms – don't ask, Ron, and you won't need to find out – and he'll write up the birth certificate to say I'm the mother. Mum and Dad were a bit dubious, but we've got to do something to get a birth certificate."

"You're going to pretend you're his mother?" Harry knew Hermione was brave, but this took the cake – bakery and all.

"Yes. Luckily Ron and I have already – um." She blushed scarlet. Ron was blushing even redder, and Harry decided a quick change of topic was in order before either of his friends spontaneously combusted. He doubted they'd get off as easily as Seve- Steven.

"Ah… Your parents. Are they going to stay in England?"

"They've been wanting to close the clinic and move to the south of France for the last two years… they only stayed because they were worried about me," she told Harry, sounding apologetic although he didn't know why. "But now they can have someone else to worry about… and it'll get them out of England. France is safer at the moment. Another old schoolmate of Dad's is too busy and needs a partner – it's ideal, especially as you said you want him to go to Beauxbatons."

Harry shook his head weakly. "It _is_ perfect. I keep looking for the loop-hole." Any loop-hole, really, that would let him keep the baby under his protection a little longer.

"When one comes up, I'll tell you. I promise. So relax a little in the meantime. You've got enough to do, getting ready for the end of the week and everything. Me, too, come to think of it. Neville's got some really uncanny ideas – he's been talking to Luna, I bet. Ron's, well, let's just say it's about time wizards had someone in their midst who can treat war as dispassionately as a chess game."

Ron rolled his eyes. "I'm dispassionate now, am I?"

Hermione grinned. "Sorry – that wasn't quite right. But you've got a knack for strategy, that's all. Is it okay if I take him now, Harry?"

Harry eyed the massive pack of baby things. He guessed Hermione had never thought it wouldn't be okay.

"Yeah, sure. Um. Can I…?" Harry took the baby back one last time, just to check the teddy-bear blanket Remus had bought him was in place, or so he told himself. Bluish eyes that were beginning to develop pigment gazed up at him with infinite trust. Harry swallowed. "You'll be fine," he whispered huskily.

Ron shouldered the pack. He glared good-naturedly at Hermione. "Lucky you used that shrinking charm, eh?"

"Very," Hermione replied seriously, not noticing the affectionate ribbing. She was busy making sure the phoenix was tucked in with the baby. "There we go. I'll take him straight to Mum and Dad's. Coming, Harry?"

Harry shook his head. "No. I've stuff to do back at HQ." Stuff which only underscored the fact that the best way he had of keeping the baby safe was to make sure it was somewhere far, far away. Not in a war-zone, to be more precise.

Hermione sighed. "Yes. I'll see you there mid-afternoon. I've got some plans for using the Dark Mark as a portkey so we can all go in together rather than you alone…"

Harry nodded and smiled wryly. "That'd be welcome. I don't want to have everyone depending on me to get those wards down." When he'd taken the Dark Mark from the corpse something in it must have attuned to him. When anyone else tried to touch it, it turned to smoke and had to be sucked into an ether tube and distilled, which was a long, complicated process and, as Remus had said with the sort of grin that everyone was finding easier now, bloody exasperating and typical Snape. "See you then, then."

Hermione smiled and Ron nodded at Harry. "Don't worry. He'll be fine. I'll… We'll make sure he's safe for you. And him," he added, his grin slightly awry but no less genuine. "See ya, mate." The sharp _crack!_ as he Disapparated came a split second after Hermione's.

Harry looked around. No-one had come to investigate, and if they did he'd just say it was a truck backfiring on the motorway. He started, his heart racing, when thought he saw something looking out at him.

It was a piece of mirror sitting against the fence. The rain had washed enough of the dirt from it for Harry to see his own face.

He leaned over and saw his eyes. It took him a moment to realise what the oddity about his reflection was, then he realised two things:

His scar was gone. That was good, he supposed.

But not as good at what he saw in his own eyes. That hollowed-out look of mute despair was also gone. He looked… somehow renewed.

Harry straightened and squared his shoulders. There was planning to do. He could just as easily be dead this time next week, and just because the Dementors were gone (or severely diminished at the least) didn't mean all the Death Eaters were, too, even with whatever traps Snape had left lying around. Harry couldn't stay out in the open enjoying the sun like a normal person – he was a target standing out here alone like this. Time to get back to headquarters.

But for the moment before he Disapparated, Harry lifted his face to the sky again and felt the warmth of simply being and knew there was redemption left in this world. Maybe it teetered and wobbled on its axis alarmingly, but, like some gyroscope that mysteriously generated its own spin, it never quite toppled. Fingers crossed, it knew what it was doing.

And beneath this respite of blue sky Harry knew, too, that he could and would deal with whatever the world threw at him next.

After a third _crack!_ the alley was empty except for a small scarlet feather, which lifted and blew away in the breeze.

ooOOoo

END

ooOOoo

A/N the first: Once upon a time in a time so long ago graphic novels were called comics, a girl borrowed a comic off a friend. It was called "Tales of the Macabre" or somesuch. In between stories of human frailties and payback for bad deeds done, there was one story that girl never forgot (although she since forgot the author's name and was unable to credit that person justly for influencing a future fanfic). The story was about and old woman who lived alone except for her regrets at what she hadn't done with her life. But she was a kind woman who didn't inflict her bitterness on anyone other than herself, and one day when a pair of children brought her a shabby old bird in need of care, she took the bird in and gave it food and water and whatever medicine it would take. But the bird seemed to have a fever. It grew hotter and hotter, until it was too hot to touch. Then the house was seen to catch on fire. A man who tried to get through the fire to save her thought he saw a magnificent bird made of flame rise from the roof. No-one could have survived the heat of the blaze. But when the man went into the house, he found the old woman's sitting room untouched. The bird that had been in it was gone, as was the old woman, but in the middle of the floor was a new-born baby girl.

The man took the baby away and hoped she would grow up into someone who lived fully and without regrets.

And the girl who read the comic grew up but remembered it for years and years and finally re-wrote it with different characters. So very little of the story was hers, really; not the characters and not the idea of the second chance you get through a phoenix… but that idea is as old as the idea of the phoenix itself, perhaps, so maybe the story belongs to everyone. Maybe it's an indication of how many people feel like they need it. (Especially those who lack originality so have their fun faffing about with other writers' characters. ;-P )

A/N the second: yeah, I wanted to leave the ending open like this. If you really need to know (because that was the end of this story), Harry goes in and kicks Voldie's backside. Death Eaters, 0; Order of the Phoenix, 276. (Would have been 279, but three Malfoys managed to mysteriously Be Somewhere Else.) Fill in your own victory party scene where Ron proposes to Hermione and Moody gets so drunk he throws up on Mrs Norris and proposes to Filch. Oh, and if anyone was wondering how Snape can channel a kazillion volts without dying immediately, he's a wizard. He knows really cool stuff about… um… stuff and stuff (and thus means a fanfic writer doesn't have to work too hard on background to the plot). I have considered writing something set several years after the victory party involving Harry and Narcissa, both of whom have Major Issues concerning Dangerous Situations – well, Harry's entitled to them, poor kid. But frankly I've got enough to do with that pesky thing known as Real Life … and there's a certain tall, black, bad-tempered horse needing attention in another fanfic. Oh, and that follow-up to Katabatic which was started a year and a half ago and left to simmer… and the other follow-up to Katabatic which has been bugging me for two years… ai-ya…

ooOOoo

Cheers to reviewers (you guys make my day better):

Oya: I think there are already enough Snape babyfics out there and I wasn't ever planning on writing one. But I'll keep it in mind as I owe you something for all the reviews you've given me… but if I do it will probably be set when he's about three or four, and it'll be Harry-centric and involve Narcissa (but not as a care-taker).  
Donroth: yeah, I've never seen H/N as a pairing; she really came from out of nowhere. Glad you thought it was hot – it wasn't initially what I was aiming at but then it seemed to write itself. Yikes.  
hotcocoalatte: Yes, I'm pretty certain given how upset she was in HBP she'd do anything for Draco – and renouncing Voldie wouldn't be a big step for mother who knows sometimes the best form of defence is attack.  
Persephone Lupin: Yes, I think Narcissa could be the wild card in the next book. She's got the style for it, certainly. A couple of people suggested giving Snape to Molly and I do quite like her, but I thought it safer for Snape to be taken away from preconceptions. Yes… liked your epilogue! Cheers for that.  
AngelFYI13: Yes, mad, bad and dangerous to know, as bookwyrm said. But with a more solid object for her love than Bellatrix has.  
Bookwyrm: good – I wanted Harry to have more depth, but I'm not good at portraying the subtleties. Yes, you were right about Narcissa – it's all from Harry's PoV so the real limits of her sanity or otherwise would not be known to him. And wouldn't it rock to grow up with a phoenix?  
Firestar: cheers – but that was the last chapter.  
Duj: ta. I don't think canon!Snape is capable of a happy ending… or being happy, period. Not unless there's some major intervention, anyway. I get the impression he's borderline psychotic and only held in check by the forces that have driven him to the brink of insanity, ironically enough (Voldemort, his work as a spy for whichever side he takes in the end).  
Lump: …or just "the baby" ;-)  
LM: Cheers. I think Snape might just have lucked out with this one, though.  
Bianca. Ah. The other person who wants a baby!Snape fic. I'm afraid it's going to be unlikely from me… but keep checking my page just in case, because I would most definitely be covering those points you raised. Oya is also pushing for a baby!Snape fic… it would be a young Steven fic, though and I think there are a few of those out there (Mystical Dragon did a particularly cute and angsty one). This story finishes here; I've got too much else to do, unfortunately, and it was Harry's ability to reshape his idea of the world that I wanted to work on. I decided to leave the Patronus clouded as, although I could stick any manner of mythical creatures up in the storm (and had two in particular I would have liked to use), I thought it might be more fun for the readers to "insert Patronus A into Slot B", so to speak.  
SirJimmy7: yay – I really enjoyed writing Fawkes like this.  
Excessivelyperky: I think Latin for hope is 'lotto' – but that may be a tad cynical of me. :-D Molly must know some people, yes, and I expect Harry might have asked her eventually, but she tends to be a bit controlling. And Harry wanted more input into Steven's future – which he should get with the Grangers, once he gets of his instinctive mistrust (which he knows is groundless with them) of Muggles. Molly's relatives might be too easy to track down for any axe-grinding Death Eater. Where is this Evil Overlord Page of which you speak? It might help me iron out my moustache-twirling clichés.

Cheers, guys. Phew! It's over. I can… hold it… what is this horse doing looking in my window? Why is it glaring at me like that? Doesn't it know this is the fifth floor? Who let it into the building, anyway? And how the hell did it get up that claustrophobic stairwell? Obviously it couldn't have come up the fire escape as those are luxury items in Taiwanese architecture…

Yeah, _someone_ wants attention… and peppermints. Well, it will have to wait – there's a typhoon coming over and I have mops and buckets to get ready.

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Anyone still reading this far? Darn. Well, if you're really bored...

I apologise in advance.

...And now for something completely different. (Cartoonish foot comes down on cartoonish Hogwarts with a squelching noise)

Here's a small 2am idea I've written out for any of you who've read this far and need something light and a little whacked-out after the above angst-fest you've just waded through. I'm afraid it just wouldn't go anywhere else. WARNING! Some dragging of POLITICS into it (you probably shouldn't read this if you're a Republican). Oh, and bad language. Spoilers for – well, goodness knows. Can't see this cropping up in anything legit.

Harry goes to an alternate dimension. (How does he get there? Who knows? Who cares?) He finds Snape, whose hair is still greasy but tied back tightly in a pony tail and who wears sunglasses even in his office. Snape of this dimension is acting as an agent for Voldemort, whose squawks of indignation can be faintly heard from the receiver held slightly away from Snape's ear.

Snape stubs out a cigarette on a Grateful Dead ashtray, baresthe yellow teeth of a terminal nicotine addictand uses his most mellow voice on the person on the other end of the line.

"Tom, Tom, whoa there, babycakes… No dark lord drives a _Honda_. A black stretch limo or a Humvee at the least – Arnie drives a Hummer, it's classy! Yeah, I know the Honda's a good family car, but do you think 'family guy' is really You, babe? Plus, sweetheart, think of all the fuel you'll squander! Your new idea could be to drive the major oil-consuming countries into conflict over dwindling resources and thus bring about a global – What? Done already? Who? Oh, fuck, yeah. The other Dark Lord. Yeah, well, don't worry, babe, something'll be found before you can say 'release the hounds'. Yeah, yeah… I'll get on to it. Don't worry your sweet self over it, babe. Death Eater's word. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. _No_ problemo. Yeah. But I wouldn't advise a lengthy alliance. Short term and I'll sharpen the knife myself to make sure it goes into his back without a hitch."

Puts down phone. Asks Harry: "Who the fuck's Dubya's representative? Any idea?"

Harry shakes his head and makes sure the door isn't locked behind him.

Snape yells into intercom, "Cissy, find me Dubya's rep! And book me in for another rhinoplasty. This one's wearing off…. What? For Christ's sake, no! Not him: that's the same doctor that freak-arse pop singer used. I've got enough troubles without my nose imploding!"

Pulls open a drawer, pulls out a bottle of pills and washes down a handful with a swig of whiskey. Offers a second handful to Harry.

Slowly, Harry backs out of the room and shuts the door as quietly as possible. He clicks his heels together three times, saying, "There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's…" and disappears in a really cool shower of sparks that fell off the back of a Spielberg film.

Blame Bob Roberts.

(If you thought that was bad, be grateful I didn't write up the one where Snape is teaching English to Osama bin Laden. That one has a happy ending… providing you're not Osama, of course.)


End file.
